


Return to the World's End

by Phynxlegion



Category: Eureka, Samurai Girl (TV), The Middleman (TV), Warehouse 13
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 31
Words: 59,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phynxlegion/pseuds/Phynxlegion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena recruits Myka to fight in the world's last stand with three others, each bringing to the table their unique skills and abilities to save the world in its final hours. This will be an ongoing story. Takes place after Season 4. The Pen is Mightier is a prequel to this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. “The Promise”

**Return of the World’s End**

**Chapter 1**

 

Myka Bering had fallen into a mundane existence since leaving the Warehouse. All her work had devastated her emotionally, and the simple life of books and sales gave her a warm comfort. Leaving the Secret Service, Myka couldn’t function in her previous occupation in any capacity with her current prognosis.  Weeks passed, and she slowly became numb and downcast. Having abandoned her job and friends, she felt worse sitting in her room alone and desolate. Walking the rows of book-filled shelves, they became like a gallery of judicators condemning her decision and actions.

It was on a gloomy rain-soaked day, which Myka found herself plagued by her thoughts, with the weather only adding to her looming depression. Sitting in the far corner out of sight of the front door, she sits crying mercilessly. Time became meaningless as her thoughts overwhelm her senses. As she sinks further into oblivion, the bell on the door snaps her out of her lull and she wipes her face of any evidence of her loathsome existence. Striding to the front, she skids to a stop seeing a familiar tall brunette standing at the counter wearing a warm smile.

“Hello Myka.”

Myka eyes flash exhilaration, and then she subdues her momentary loss of control.

“Helena, what brings you to Colorado Springs?”

The brunette smiles having noticed Myka’s loss of composure.

“I’m here to talk to you actually.”

Myka angrily pulls away.

“Look! I told you all, I’m not going back the warehouse, and that’s final!”

Helena rushes around to the side of the counter to intercept Myka before she can get away.

“I’m not here about the warehouse! Please! I’m here to ask you a favor! A special situation has just risen which hasn’t been an issue since before I joined Warehouse 12. It’s probably the reason I was exposed to the warehouses in the first place. I wrote a book about what I saw; and because it was so science fiction, I got away with it being published. I used exaggeration and changed the location, but it was based on a real event. And now, it’s become an issue again. I’ve been asked to build a team to counter this old threat once again. I need reliable people who will not be surprised by the incredible situations we might face. Even better, we won’t have to collect or investigate artifacts. Please I want you to join me on this. I couldn’t imagine anyone more suited than you…and I was hoping you felt the same way about working with me again.”

Myka stops and shakes off the emotions welling inside of her. Rolling her eyes around the room, she finally finds Helena staring intently at her, forcing her to address the situation before her. Helena Grabs Myka’s hands and pulls her forward to face her directly.

“Listen to me. I’m not interested in why you left or that you still have a bunch of emotions contorting your every thought. This thing I have to deal with. If you are with me, I think I can stop it before it destroys the world. I could try and find someone else, but I’d prefer to have you at my side. I think I can promise we won’t have any beds which are artifacts, so we won’t have any unplanned or awkward wakeups.”

Myka turns all shades of red in seconds.

“Hey! Neither Claudia or I have ever spoken about that mission!”

Surprised, Helena immediately apologizes.

“I’m sorry! I had gotten past that years ago, I thought you had too. My fault. So, are you interested?”

Myka shakes her head and paces the floor.

“I don’t know. This sounds so much like the Warehouse, that’s all.”

Helena shakes her head as she replies.

“I assure you, the only artifacts we will see are those which we use, which aren’t that many. I like to keep my Tesla and grapple hook on hand, and I sometimes have an artifact to get me out of trouble now and then. That’s it. The weapons we will use will be supplied by our sponsors. Our first mission is entirely a scouting mission, and we shouldn’t have any contact. I need your keen mind and reflexes for this; and though I’ll be strapped to find an adequate replacement, I must have five people in a team. They chose me because I have faced them before, and I said I could assemble a team in 19 hours. I have two in the car, and one on the way. All I need is for you to sign on, and I can get going.”

Myka, confronted with imminent death by depression, cancer, or an opportunity to be killed on the job, she is drawn to the latter.

“Fine. Alright. I’m in. When do you want to go?”

Helena can’t constrain the passionate smile creeping over her face.

“Now…as you are! Everything you need will be provided.”

Wearing a confused expression, she follows Helena out to a waiting limousine. Like the limousines she’d walked next to on presidential details, its ominous black exterior and windows concealed both its purpose and occupants. The door opens as they approach and Helena motions for Myka to enter. Sitting, she makes out a woman sleeping in one corner and another woman sleeping across from her. As her eyes adjust, a tall figure reaches out with his hand to shake. In a hoarse voice, he waits for Myka to shake.

“It’s a pleasure miss Bering.”

With slight hesitation, Myka finally reaches and accepts his hand. The moment his hand closes around hers, she feels a jolt of electricity pass through her, putting her firmly asleep.

Slowly letting her slide back, the man lets go only until Myka is completely back her seat. Running his hand through her hair and face, he empties Myka’s pockets and exits the vehicle as Helena waits outside. He pauses to bow to her as he strides into the bookstore and locks up for the day. As the limo pulls away, he walks into the bathroom. Taking off his jacket, he turns to look in the mirror. Instead of the dark skinned complexion he wore in the limo, he now completely resembled Myka both in appearance and height. Practicing his voice, he nodded in appreciation for his gift and sat down to read: “The War of the Worlds.”

She mutters to the surrounding books:

“I hope we do better than the last time.”


	2. “The Short Ride”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It continues. No peeks. If you liked the prior chapter, continue reading.

**Chapter 2**

 

 Myka rouses with a peculiar metallic taste in her mouth and her head throbbing.  Looking around, she sees no one has moved since she sat down in the limousine but Helena is still nowhere in sight. With her eyes adjusted to the low light of the car, she nearly shirks backwards seeing the woman in the far corner staring back at her. In relief, the rave-haired brunette speaks softly in a Russian/Ukrainian accent, helping Myka place the face.

“I see the effects of the memory transfer has finally worn off, yes?”

Myka nods and looks closer at the young woman still unconscious.

“You’re the EU agent we met in Seattle, right?”

Nodding the woman smiles demurely.

“Da. I was Agent Anastasia Krylenko, but you must call me Anastasia or Anna. If we just call each other by last name, we’ll never get anywhere. You were Agent Bering…but I cannot recall you first name.”

Myka nods and glances around the young woman asleep across from Anastasia.

“Myka. Who’s she?”

Smiling and bobbing her head, she reaches over and shakes the knee of the woman, not far into her twenties. Dressed in a plain white t-shirt and torn jeans, she begins to rouse.

“This sloppy-dressed, socially clueless child is probably our strategic analyst who is supposed to have an IQ greater than yours and mine combined. I know you scored in your 130’s, and I’m just a few houses down from that, so this little fake redhead makes us look like village idiots.”

Myka shakes her head. Looking at Anna, she sees a spectacular outfit, which is probably beyond her price range for the next dozen years. From the shoes to the black crepe and lace gown, Anna hardly resembled the typical warehouse agent.

“Did Helena grab you on your way to dinner?”

Nodding, Anna adjusts her gown and takes her compact out of her purse to check her makeup.

“Da. I was on my way to Donna’s…Donna Karan. She gets so ‘pissy’ when I wear Stella McCartney to her parties. She really needs to get over it. I suppose my Doppleganger is living it up right now…or did. It’s over by now.”

With her curiosity peaking, Myka has to ask.

“What do you mean Doppleganger? You mean the guy I shook hands with?”

Repeating her exaggerated head bobbing, Anna smiles and she adjusts her dress.

“Doppleganger. A creature who can assume the identity of anyone they come in contact with. There’s this memory copying thing that ensures they can portray their victim perfectly. You fall instantly asleep for several hours, and they wake completely unaware that they have been replaced. In the old days, the Dopplganger would kill the victim and ensuring no one was the wiser, but now they work with us.”

Shocked, Myka’s jaw drops open.

“Someone’s taken my place! Wha…”

Anna can only shake her head making a clicking sound.

“This is the only way we can do what’s necessary without endangering our friends and family we leave behind. The war will take full commitment on all our parts, and we must be able to operate without any worries for those we leave behind. The Doppleganger are an honorable people now, and they take this duty to heart. By copying every memory, they can act as if they _were_ you, not just like you.”

Seeing Myka’s anxiety, Anna laughs and shakes her head as she replies.

“You must trust your friend Helena. She trusts you, and you should give her that trust back. I gave her my trust long ago, and I think this young girl feels the same, or she wouldn’t be here right now.”

From the napping redhead, a cold voice chimes in.

“I gave my trust to Helena’s friends, and by extension her. Her friends saved me when I had nothing to live for. They put me through school, gave me a reason to live, and I am grateful. Hi. I’m Candice.”

  After Myka shakes her hand, she looks around the limo and shrugs.

“Myka. So Helena said there’d be another. Either of you know who that is?”

Candice shrugs as well as Anna.

“Nyet. She said we’d meet her when we get to where we are going.”

The limo makes a gentle turn and comes to a stop. As the three women stare at each other, the door next to Anna suddenly opens with Helena bending over into the car.

With a sly grin, she looks around inside the car and motions to exit.

“Come on girls, we’ve arrived.”

As the three women step out, stretching their weary legs, Myka sees why the pair has stopped by the front of the door making it difficult for her to get out of the car. Looking out of the door of the car, she sees a vast stretch of gigantic hangers, each neatly aligned and guarded by M-1 Battle tanks. As she gawks at the sight, she ignores Anna’s constant tugging on her shirt sleeve until Helena smiles lovingly and cups Myka’s chin in her hand. Turning her head around until her body follows suit, Myka begins to get annoyed until she sees what sight has the two other women frozen in place.

Supported by an extensive scaffolding system and work platforms up eight stories high, a long bronze-colored cigar-shaped vessel fills the half-mile long hanger. Myka stands speechless before the incredible ship moored in the hanger, and Helena breaks the silence.

“Welcome to Morlock City.”

 


	3. “Morlock City”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It continues. No peeks. If you liked the prior chapter, continue reading.

**Chapter 3**

 

Myka stares frozen in awe alongside her two companions. Anna is the first to break free of the grasp.

“Helena, you were really holding back on me. When you said this was both awesome and inspiring…you didn’t use enough emphasis.”

Wearing a proud grin, Helena sighs dramatically.

“I said I wasn’t lying. These are what’s left of an attack fleet which we recovered and repaired. We brought it all back here for safe keeping. Follow me.”

Helena strides around the car, leading the three women who walk like patients on lithium. Myka shakes off the effects long enough to ask a question as they pass a large open ramp on the side of the machine.

“You’re telling me these are Martian space ships?”

Shaking her head, Helena looks at Myka and everyone as she replies.

“No. That was something I made up…we had a lot of Martian fever going around, so I used it. These are Yamorian Troop ships…at least most of them are. They intended to recover them after the invasion, but I think you all know how that story went. That I didn’t make up. Their air filters weren’t designed to filter the air as well as they should have, and they were assaulted by our unknowing allies: germs.”

Candice chimes in immediately, seemingly all too familiar with H.G. Well’s novel.

“They attacked the planet on a global scale! How come we don’t know about it?”

Helena shakes her finger at her.

“Another literary freedom. It wasn’t our planet I was on when I described the invasion. I was selected by the organization to be an ambassador to that world and we just happened to be there during the invasion. There were over a hundred of us originally…many good people.”

Myka doesn’t miss the reawakened residual pain from the event, and lets Helena continue without prying.

“When the invasion began, the Famori tried to resist using their technology but it was useless. Many of our people were slaughtered alongside theirs defending the injured and helpless. I…”

Helena chokes momentarily in her story.

“…I was fortunate enough to be in an outlying district when they attacked. They became aware of our presence and began separating us from the local species to study. They did horrible things to us, not caring we were sentient beings like them. I escaped and held out fighting alongside the Famori. Then it happened. Thirty days into the invasion, they were all dead or in full retreat. It was only after we investigated the reasons we won, that we discovered that their air filtration system wasn’t capable of filtering out our unique germs and pathogens. So as they got close and started dissecting us, the germs and bacteria within our bodies were released into their ships and began infecting them like the Spanish flu on speed. The Famori were fairly grateful and disgusted by the victory. We immediately learned how to develop lots of ways of fighting disease thanks to them, as they raced to inoculate their population against our bugs and germs. We’re still allies with them, but I haven’t been there since before I was bronzed.”

A young girl’s voice calls out from behind the group as they stride into a private break room alongside the cafeteria.

“So you finally showed back up Helena? I thought you were dead.”

Helena spins around and the rest of the group follows suit to see a child approximately ten or twelve standing with her arms crossed. Wearing a lab coat and bright red high-top sneakers, her brilliant silver shoulder-length hair reflects the overhead florescent light. Barely five feet tall, the child caries herself as if she’s carrying years of weight on her shoulders. Helena looks at the girl in disbelief.

“Doctor Montgomery? What happened to your hair?”

With a cute angry scowl she grits her teeth and punches a tall Air Force colonel in the ribs as he passes. Fighting the pain, he tries to contain his laughter as he rushes towards the nearest elevator.

The girl yells at him as she explains to Helena.

“Some ASS told me it was all the rage here now, and everyone has silver hair, and that I should learn to blend in! Bastard! It’ll only wear off in like forty or fifty YEARS! I know where you sleep Jim! This is hardly over!”

She stops yelling only after the elevator doors fully shut. She pulls at her short metallic silver locks as she speaks.

“See what I have to deal with around here? It’s good to see you again Helena.”

They hug and Helena introduces the team she brought.

“This beautiful raven-haired woman is…”

Dr. Montgomery cuts her off.

“One Anastasia Krylenko. Your reputation precedes you very well. I read about the blood diamond market you singlehandedly brought down. Good work. She is too modest to admit it, but people were mining a rare diamond which sucked the blood out of anyone who owned it. It took a small miracle to destroy them all. The defense community wanted to syphon them into weapons, but she chose the morale high ground over any financial gain.”

With a subtle smile she shrugs.

“How many trillions does a girl need to have before enough is enough.”

As Candice rolls her eyes to Anna’s response, the doctor turns to her.

“And this should be Candice Flannery, genius extraordinaire. There’s no code she’s can’t crack, or amount of data she can’t sift through to find a link.”

She too shrugs and looks around nervously from the attention.

“I do what I can.”

Helena turns to Myka, and lets the doctor continue.

“And this leaves us with Special Agent Myka Bering. The one person who has done so much work to protect this world of ours that no one has or ever will hear about. Unlike Anna, Miss Bering’s work with the warehouses has and will stay above top secret. From what little I have heard, I’m impressed. I’m impressed with your entire team Helena. You did well. There’s a thirty day isolation/decontamination period before we go, so let’s get everyone inoculated and into their living area.”

Leading them down corridor, she swipes her card at an elevator entrance. Taking them inside, she selects the 4th sub-floor and then swipes her card against the control panel to approve the floor selection. The elevator moves gently downwards, sealing their fates for the future.

 


	4. “Worsening States”

**Chapter 4**

 

After a week of tearing over books of data, Myka still was no closer to finding out exactly what their purpose would be when they arrived. Helena and the doctor were tight-lipped fearing security leaks. Their fears were not of the enemy but of the people working in the facility. After over a hundred years, the Earth still wasn’t ready for extraterrestrial worlds and societies. H.G. Well’s iconic story, meant to inspire and open the minds of her readers, only fueled fear and xenophobia. With daily blood samples and tests for everyone, Myka  felt like a pin cushion. Assured that it was required for the first week, she couldn’t wait for the week to be over. Sitting in her bed perusing a report detailing the social norms of the Famori, Myka absently toys with the pocket of her grey and white striped sleep pants. A matching long sleeve shirt topped off the ensemble, and only Anna had issues with the lack of color and style. Myka remembers the teary farewell Anna gave her wardrobe upon arrival. Insisting it should be sent to her Doppleganger, Anna adamantly opposed destruction or sending the five thousand dollar dress to a second hand store.

Myka finally found time to corner their doctor to discuss her terminal cancer treatments. Pulling up Myka’s confidential files from her computer nearly put Myka in orbital rage. Doctor Montgomery, calming Myka by reminding her of her confidentiality agreement all doctors share, gets a handhold on the raging agent in her temporary office.

“Listen Myka, there is little we can do here about the tumors. They will have to run their course here. After we get to our destination, I promise to address them immediately. Your prognosis is only a year, so we won’t see any accelerated growth in the next thirty days. You shouldn’t have any detrimental effects to your time here, so we’ll get you into their clinic after we arrive. I don’t want you to be thinking negatively for this mission, so I assure you this is just a trying period until we get there. I have you on some painkillers, and I’m suspending the radiation treatments. I think you agree on the pointlessness of pursuing this. On the bright side, your blood work shows some improvement without the chemo-drugs, so let’s pursue this line of therapy. When we get to our destination, I’ll have superior facilities to address your illness. So, don’t let this period get you down. We only have three weeks left of decontamination.”

Three weeks of impending moping around, reading boring societal analyses, and two hours of gym time spread out through the day could barely curtail her curiosity. Anna would spend four hours working out, two in the morning and after lunch. With this rigorous workout schedule, she was starting to show the fruits of her labor. Though she was already quite fit and trim, Myka noticed her arms, legs and abdomen were beginning to show serious definition. Despite her cancer ravaging and spreading inside her unrestricted, she was starting to feel different in a good way. She discovered she had the energy to join Anna in the gym in the morning, and for the first time in months, she actually felt good afterwards.

Myka preferred to run on the treadmill in the mornings, and do other exercises in the afternoon. This was the same routine as Helena and the young doctor. Though Doctor Karla Montgomery appeared so young, it was incredible watching her keep up with Helena and Anna. Lining up in the mornings, they would take time to run beside each other every other day. On the days which Candice exempted herself from running, Anna would challenge the doctor to a race on the treadmills. Interlinked, they start slow but would gradually accelerate until one of the two would drop out. By the second week, Anna still hadn’t won. Even Myka couldn’t keep up with Anna, and the doctor was even faster than Anan could imagine. As Anna steps of the treadmill she would always add how the machines were not equal to running for real.

Candice, on the other hand, only ran once every other day and did her weights on her off days. Like Anna, she too was already quite fit, but lacked the definition everyone else was achieving. She had made it a habit of marking every report she read with her initials in red in the corner of every book and report she consumed. Her hunger for knowledge was truly ravenous. She could sit down and read a 500 page report in one sitting, and not bat an eyelash. Her fingers flipped pages every four or five seconds. Though Myka was a fast reader, even she couldn’t digest and comprehend the volume of data she was taking in. In the first week, she had absorbed over half of the data everyone had to read in thirty days.        

A negligible animosity existed between Anna and Candice which kept the pair apart. It was apparent that she couldn’t stand how Candice could flip absently at the pages of a book, and yet retain every word she read. Myka also had this trait, but Candice took it to a level even she couldn’t master. Though she didn’t let it show, Candice was slightly put off by Anna’s commitment to training. Myka had made it her job to analyze her team, and she made sure she knew them inside and out. It was plainly obvious she couldn’t do what Candice did; and with her cancer consuming her she found she either lacked the physical strength or mental resolve to accomplish the task. Though she rationalized if she had enough time she could equal the fitness level Anna had achieved, her current state was debilitating.

By the end of the first week, it was apparent that the doctor and Helena went back a long time. Sharing their stories, it was obvious that they had walked the streets of old London together which meant the doctor was far older than she led on. Though they dodged specific inquiries, Myka had enough clues to confirm her beliefs. It was one evening that Helena entered her sleep area after dinner and sat down on the edge of Myka’s bed. Shoving a lengthy report over the agricultural production levels aside, Myka stretches and puts on a weak sleepy smile.

“Helena, this junk is so boring. Don’t you have an abbreviated version of all this?”

Helena chuckles.

“Not here. We keep those on the mother ship. Seriously, this stuff doesn’t get much better than this. You need to have an understanding of the raw data to appreciate the importance of what we will do. Okay, some of it is very dry, but it’s very important to know everything about these people. The oldest reports are only a few years, while some are just weeks old. They have a rich culture and value the preservation of life in all its forms. Please trust Karla. If she says she can help you, put your faith in her. There was a time where she and I were extremely close…”

Myka feels her ears warm and a knot forming in her stomach hearing those words. She tries to play it off by just nodding and mumbling: ‘Uh huh.’ She lets Helena continued uninterrupted.

“…but we both moved on now. She stayed with her studies, and well, everyone knows what I went on and did. I went just a bit bonkers, but I think the worst is behind me.”

Myka can’t keep her mouth shut, and squirms to get more information out of Helena by using every ounce of subtleness in her body.

“So, how close were you two?”

Helena drifts back momentarily and sighs softly.

“Close. She didn’t use to look like she does now. She had long red hair back then, and well wasn’t looking like she had just ran away from Primary School. You know how you got up and left the warehouse a few years ago?”

Myka nods, enraptured by Helena’s every word.

“Well that’s how it was when we broke up. She made choices, and so did I. And though you went back to the warehouse, I never considered going back to her. Now, we’ve grown apart, and she talks about a semi-permanent companion waiting for her on the planet. She seems happy, so I’m happy for her. And…never mind.”

Taken back by the best part being robbed from her, she pushes back instantly.

“No! Please tell me.”

Reading the stress and perspiration beading on her brow, she nudges as hard as she can to get her to continue.

For the first time since discovering her terminal cancer leaving the warehouse, she was contemplating cheating death somehow. She had gone through the stages of denial, remorse, flight, and thought she was well into dealing with the beast ravaging her body and soul. For the first time, in a long time, she wished Pete had found an artifact to stop and reverse the cancer. As the logical part of her brain orders her to stop dreaming of the gorgeous woman kneeling beside her, her heart muffles the orderly logic of protecting Helena. She was going to die. This was not an opinion, it was the ugly truth. And in less than 12 months, her body would shut down and she would leave Helena a broken shell of a person in her wake. It was neither fair to Helena or to Myka, and she would never wish that pain on anyone. Tears flow uncontrollably and she wants to tell Helena ‘no’ but her mouth can’t form the word. Her lips trembles, but still nothing flutters across her lips. As she begins to talk her way out of the situation, Helena leans over and caresses Myka’s cheek, and pulls her into a deep kiss. As they lie asleep together in the dark room, the red glow light from Myka’s clock beams out, outlining the furniture and its minimal contents. Transitioning from 03:59 to 04:00, a subtle purple mist forms and disappears in the room. When the clock flips to 04:01, two piles of clothes sit on the chair near the desk. Folded and stacked neatly, they sit idly as the pair sleep restfully intertwined.

 


	5. “Waiting for a Miracle”

**Chapter 5**

 

Making the next couple weeks fly by came much easier for Myka. After polishing off the longest reports, zipping through the short ones under a hundred pages each was far easier. With her days filled with reading and her nights with Helena, she found time didn’t weigh her down as much. With a new found happiness energizing her, she felt the world wasn’t as burdening as it seemed weeks ago. Even the doctor noticed her refreshed and invigorated after her weekly checkups, despite her progressing cancer. Unlike Helena and Myka, it was apparent that there were too many differences between Candice and Anna to form anything more than being team members.

Anna brightened up hearing that her lightning rod would be going with her. Referring to it as a Tesla Rod, she could call lightning on demand to whatever spot she chose, rain or shine. Though the majority of the large ships and transports were immune to its effects, the smaller exploration and attack craft weren’t, making it a priceless weapon in the field. Myka also heard they would be issuing Claudia’s improved Tesla guns when they leave. Not mentioning how they got her blueprints, they simply stated it was authorized. The Famori weren’t fond of the conventional weaponry the Earth had developed and the Tesla weaponry was accepted more readily. Though the doctor couldn’t go into more detail on what was waiting for them, she implied their weapon technology was far more sophisticated than the Tesla’s.

During the last week, they each got fitted for the space suits they’d where to the world. Though they never saw the suits, their measurements were taken and they were told that they wouldn’t be delivered until they were needed. Finding this particularly peculiar, Myka accepted it as with everything they’d been told of up to now. Ambiguity and confusion was a tool they utilized far too often. Told just enough to get the job done and win obedience was beginning to wear thin on Myka and Candice. Anna seemed to accept the ambiguity far too easy, but Helena rationalized that she was probably used to it due to her time in her government’s artifact recovery service.

During the middle of the last week, Myka took a fall during her run on the treadmill and was bed ridden for the remainder of the day. Though no one said it, Myka knew it was due to her cancer. Her counts were worsening rapidly, and she probably didn’t have the year they told her. Though the Doctor Montgomery assured her that she was still fine to travel, Myka knew she was far from being ‘fit to travel.’ With Helena sleeping with her every night, she knew she was in safe company. The worry in Helena’s eyes was something she lacked practice in hiding. The continued dizziness and energy loss concerned them both, but the doctor felt it was within safety limits.

As the time ticked by, Myka’s well of strength and courage began to drop with every passing day. Crying in Helena’s arms every night, she knew that her last days were approaching despite the enthusiasm the doctor poured out. They chose to spend every waking moment in the other’s arms or company, and abandoned the remaining reports to absorb each other’s attention and affection. By the fourth day of that week, Myka lacked the strength to leave her bed and just laid there whispering her love to Helena.

A strong rapping at the door, pulled Myka out of her solace and Helena quickly parts to answer the door. After exchanging a few whispered words, Helena wipes the tears from her eyes and nods as she closes the door.

“It’s time sweetie. Time for all of us to go.”

The pain in her heart suffocates her, and she accepts that she must watch them leave without her. As she tries to say goodbye, Helena uncovers her and helps her to the edge of the bed and undresses her. Confused, she lets Helena walk her to the shower and sits her on the plastic chair in the shower stall. Undressing, Helena returns naked and she showers with Myka. After toweling them off, Helena hooks Myka in her arm and leads her to the bedroom. With just enough energy to sit up, Myka watches Helena put on her underwear and then help Myka with a matching pair. Too confused to speak, she watches in silence as Helena retrieves a box outside their door. Setting the large cardboard box at the side of the bed, Myka sees her name printed on the side. Her heart races when Helena returns with a box of her own, and sets it down at their feet. Her eyes burst with tears, and she smiles weakly.

“I thought I was going to be left behind…I’m too weak to travel.”

Helena shakes her head no.

“What gave you that idea? You think I’d go this far and pick you if you were just going to be left here if you got sick? The doctor says you’re fit to travel despite your condition, so you’re going even if I have to carry you.”

Without saying another word, Helena dresses and then gets Myka into her skin-tight grey suit. Resembling and fitting like a diver’s wet suit, the outfit masks the seams and seals making it look like it was painted on, rather than worn like clothes. Helping Myka to the main room, Helena carries the helmets which were nothing more than light plastic head covers with clear plastic to see out of. Tying up Myka’s damp hair into a bun, she gets the helmet over her head and switches on the oxygen. The cool refreshing breeze of pure oxygen blasts her face and she sucks in greedily. The oxygen reinvigorates Myka and she feels she can continue on just a bit longer.

In moments, she feels Helena lift her into her arms and she lays her had against her woman’s chest as they walk towards the blank wall. Her eyes blur as she stares at the wall and it suddenly becomes a washy haze of color and light. As Myka shields her eyes, Helena keeps moving forward and the surroundings are suddenly replaced with a starry night. The chill of the outside air permeates through the suit and she gets the impression it far cooler than her body is telling her. Looking around she sees no topographical reference points, just a dark wasteland devoid of life. She starts to wonder if this is the world of the Famori, but stops mid-thought as a huge spotlight lands on top of them. Brighter than a sun, its warmth pierces the suit, replacing the horrible chill which was worsening.

A second light blasts out to the right of them and she sees a door to a ship opening. With a ramp to walk up, the five of them make their way to the ramp, with the heavy spotlight lighting their way overhead. Myka can feel the metallic ramp vibrate and rattle as they clomp up towards the open door. The room, no larger than the room she was staying in, has twelve individual bucket seats. Helena carefully sets her down into one, and sits beside her. Everyone finds a seat and the door closes quietly. A few seconds later, the room shakes and rumbles and the ride becomes gentler as time passes. Myka drifts into unconsciousness holding Helena’s strong hand.

Carrying Myka’s limp body in her arms, Helena strides down the ramp to a waiting gurney. Gently setting her down, three people in red surgical gowns swoop down on her and push Helena aside. Unlatching and removing the helmet they throw it into a yellow trash bag. Putting an oxygen mask on Myka they rush her and the doctor into a waiting vehicle and shoot into the distance. As Helena tries to contain her cries, Anna comes to her and leads her to another vehicle. Distraught, she tears off her helmet and sobs in her hands as they are driven to their quarters to change.  

 


	6. “The Site”

Helena sat in front of the window of her apartment brooding over the lack of information coming from the doctor. After a week of cultural briefings, and situation reports she was not pleased with her old friend. Without any callbacks or allowed to visit Myka in the hospital was finally rubbing her raw with anger, fear and frustration. Anna and Candice were running alongside each other every morning, and grudgingly Helena agreed to join them. The world they landed on turned out to be a dead satellite they used to bring people in. Their greatest fear was opening up the door, and having their enemies stride into the world. The real world of the Famori was a complete opposite which Candice and Anna had believed.

The bland and generalized written reports didn’t do justice to the glorious sights the planet offered. For Helena, she knew too well what the planet was like from her first trip over a hundred years ago; and in that time it had changed very little. The planet had come to house hundreds of thousands of humans in characteristic apartments that reached into the clouds. Called ‘Spikes,’ they were spread out across the planet. The tall 212 story pyramid-shaped complexes housed every human and family who lived on the planet. The design was a compromise with the Famori who felt that buildings which exceeded the height of their tallest trees were an insult to nature, thus an insult to their culture. The pyramid design was made as a monument to the tallest mountain on their planet and couldn’t exceed the 215 floor limit. By not exceeding or matching its height, they agreed their mountains were the tallest on the planet, and the structures could never exceed their majesty. Where the building exceeded on height, their width wasn’t close to Earth apartment standards. The new materials and construction methods allowed for fantastic heights to be achieved, and the small widths kept the tall spikes from becoming a true eyesore. Like fingers reaching out from the great forests which surrounded them, there were only made in heavily populated areas where humans worked alongside the native Famori; thus, the total number of units didn’t exceed twenty. With each skyscraper capable of housing over 21000 people including their families, it kept humans housed in one place versus spread out throughout the indigenous population.

Many of the apartments on the southern hemisphere were only ten to fifteen percent filled. These spikes had a special purpose which few people or Famori knew. Unlike the ones in the north, these spikes could hold 75 percent more people, as they were designed to only house singles and couples without children. These units were kept in ready condition for when war finally came and troops needed temporary housing. This was an ugly fact the Famori guarded above all from its own people. The Human race’s high reproductive capacity allowed for them to bring to bear the one thing the Famori could not: vast amounts of man power for troops. Their eldest realized this facet when Helena first visited the world, and the Earth’s numbers were still low compared to current global population totals. After consuming and destroying dozens of small orbiting satellites, the completion of the spikes was a top priority for the Famori who imagined the war which could come at any time. The human ability to adapt to technology and utilize it effectively was beyond their capability or vision. Despite that disability, the Famori realized they couldn’t win the next war based off foreign germs alone. The technological and scientific advancements made with human interaction became invaluable in the past one hundred years.

Helena was set into a senior leadership position upon arrival due to this being her second trip to the planet. With the position came twice as many briefings she attended versus her team members. Most were situation reports, recon of enemy territory, and department status briefs. Despite her position, she still heard nothing of Myka or the doctor. After a month of settling in, she was only now hearing that her team would be getting their assignments soon. It didn’t surprise Helena when their first mission was to recover an unusual item the Famori had discovered from the first war. The innocuous item turned out to be an old pocket watch from one of the first human teams to visit the planet. A Famori child who found it in a debris field playing, was experiencing some unusual events and accompanying nightmares. Following her hunch, Helena told Anna to bring a purple anti-static bag from the disaster kit in their building. After having the green leafy Famori child drop the watch in the anti-artifact bag, it exploded with sparks and the child’s night terrors reportedly ended. Thanking God above for Myka not being with them, she puts the watch into a bin to return to Earth for import into the Warehouse.

This is how Helena and her team spent their first month: recovering stray artifacts from the battlefields of the first war with the Yamorian Empire. Finding them turned out to be quite easy for the team. With Helena’s and Anna’s advice, Candice was soon an expert at identifying and neutralizing the unusual artifacts left over from the war. With a pair of Famori as advisors, they too became adept at the task of finding stray bits of relics and entombing the weird bits of historic items they ran across. By the end of the second week, it became apparent that a Warehouse may have to be constructed on the planet to store the alien artifacts they were discovering. When Helena pushed her report for a new warehouse to be built on the planet, the locals were firmly against it. By the end of that month, she was told that the Famori were currently researching a site for the warehouse, and they would be the sole operators, freeing up Helena’s team for their primary mission against the Yamorians. Though it still meant weeks of training the new agents, she felt that it was for the best. She also recommended that an agent from Earth should be assigned here full time to assist in the management of the warehouse for the first generation. Though she never heard back regarding her reports and recommendations, she felt they weren’t being ignored.

On their sixth week, they were called out to a restricted access site which excavators had discovered an unusual burial site. Containing no bodies, it was apparent that the Yamorians had dug a deep pit and buried the belongings of their test subjects after examination. Though this was not an unusual practice versus burning or other forms of destruction, for some reason they chose to bury it all at once. Various identification tags and personal belongings were found amongst the clothes, shoes and wallets. Even more unusual were the clothes and robes the elder Famori wore mixed up in the pits. With their Famori agents-in-training, Helena leads them in full body bio suits to carefully survey the pit. Sweating profusely in the sweltering upper eighties of a dense jungle, they agents spend their day identifying, and testing every article of clothes and personal item. The extreme trauma of torture and suffering the previous owners had experienced, inadvertently created a small number of low grade and unknown artifacts. One particular artifact turned a Famori into an angry and vengeful being, which resulted in a dousing of purple goo, filling his suit.

After a week of testing and bagging benign clothes and items, the team was finally showing their exhaustion. More importantly, they were reaching the bottom of the pit and discovering that the remaining items were only human artifacts and relics. From women’s braziers to men’s belts and watches, the tedious task of identification and neutralizing the items made everyone fall into a dreary mood. Reading the inscriptions from the previous owners or loved ones became overly depressing but compelling. Helena discovers a locket which seemed oddly familiar and she opens it immediately. To her horror, she finds a picture of her brother and her little girl. Tears erupt as she realized she gave it to a small Famori girl who was supposed to have escaped the devastation by taking her seat on the last transport to escape the city. Sobbing, she throws it into a purple bag and tucks it into her pocket.

Climbing out of the pit, she makes out a human and Famori team of engineers marking off the area with neon flags of the future airfield for the transports and cruisers in construction. The Famori chose to build over the devastated remains of the past, so that they could preserve the existing undisturbed land. As she dwells on the last days of the first war, a shrilly squeal brings her out of her lull and towards the Famori agent bagging the clothes. As the agents converge on her spot, Helena’s eyes burn in anger seeing the skeletal fingers of a Famori child poking out of the dirt.

Turning the site over to the Famori to ritualistically extract their dead, Helena leads her team out of the area and to a waiting transport. The hour trip back to their quarters is the quietest they’ve ever experienced. Even the Famori, who most complained never shut up, were eerily quiet. Dropping off Helena and her team, the transport flies away as the sun sets in the distance. She reads a note from her commander detailing her team’s transfer to the Reconnaissance Command effective immediately. Worse, she’s told to clean up, and have her team ready in two hours to catch a transport to their new site. With tension careening out of control, she buries her emotions and informs her team. Emotionally drained, they can say and do little.

It was well into the night when they finally arrive at their new living quarters. Unlike the huge spikes which most humans lived in, they were shown a set of villas two stories tall. Seeing approximately fifteen sets, she is genuinely surprised by the sight. Toting the keys of the villa, Helena enters the top floor of the villa and is surprised to find a massive open layout. With huge glass windows and six bedrooms rooms with their own baths, the villa was a dream come true. Almost immediately Helena is assaulted with the aroma of Italian food cook wafting through the door. Setting their bags on the floor, they rush inside to see the dinner table set with a large pan of steaming lasagna, fresh bowl of salad and a tall bottle of wine. After their exhausting ordeal, the room service reinvigorates the team. As Helena stares blankly at the table, a barefoot lady steps out carrying a pan of fresh garlic bread. Dressed in her sleep pants and t-shirt, Myka greets her teammates with a steaming smile.

“Hungry anyone?”

 


	7. “Breaking the Promise”

Helena drops her bags and rushes to Myka. Myka, carrying the hot pan, quickly sets it on the table in time as Helena throws her arms around her. Kissing for what seemed like hours, a clear and definitive sign to break their kiss comes from kitchen by a precise clearing of a throat. Helena almost jumps from Myka’s lips and everyone gets a good laugh at her expense. The young doctor comes around the corner toting a half-full wine glass.

“Well, you’re welcome. It wasn’t easy keeping her treatment low key with all your constant inquiries and badgering. They frown on miraculous cures around here, especially if they ever return to Earth. It creates too many questions we don’t want to answer.”

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Helena smiles and mocks the doctor’s words.

“If that were really true, how come a doctor of over one hundred and fifty years old is walking around as a child?”

Raising her glass at Helena she nods her head.

“True, but I got permission first. I was requested to become this semi-permanent form for our Famori allies. They don’t like change, and this way they will have the same representative for hundreds of years…barring premature death due to war, of course.”

Alarmed, Myka turns to the doctor in shock.

“You mean I’m going to regress to my teens?”

Shaking her head, the doctor takes a sip of wine before responding.

“Negative. Your DNA was altered to fight the cancer, and it was told what cancer was so it can reject the cells immediately and kill them. Now I also altered your DNA to repair and regenerate the cells it destroyed. Inflammatory breast cancer was both inoperable and incurable on Earth, but here even that killer can be put in its place. Now, I did extend your life a bit, but that was because the process of repair and regeneration inadvertently results in twenty to thirty percent life extension by default. I…I’ve been given authorization by the Famori to give you all this treatment if and when any of you become critically injured. They have seen your work while I was treating Myka and congratulations, you impressed them.”

Helena breaks her grip on Myka and stares in disbelief

“You can’t be serious. All we did was collect a few artifacts and such.”

Anna, noticeably hungry, begins serving herself.

“Dah! That stupid pen we recovered was far more trouble than this. Why is it such a big deal?” 

Motioning for everyone to sit and eat, the doctor begins serving people as she continues.

“The concept of artifacts is unnatural for them. Does that make any sense?”

Seeing the blank stares in her audience, she continues.

“Until people came here…humans…they never had artifacts. Now, they are seeing artifacts by their own people come into existence when they never had them before. I know I brought you all here to do one job, but the Famori have asked that I split your work between our intended mission and this new artifact phenomenon.”

Concerned, Helena turns to Myka.

“Myka…I know I promised you that we wouldn’t be doing this but maybe we can make arrangements so that you can stick with just reconnaissance.”

Shaking her head, Myka fixes her salad and accepts a plate of lasagna from the doctor.

“No. The Famori obviously need our help with these artifacts. Most of us came here as experts in the field…it seems that fate has chosen our purpose.”

Candice shrugs.

“Well I may have not been an expert recovery agent as the rest of you, but I have become quite experienced over the past few weeks. If it’s any conciliation, I think I’m seeing a pattern emerging with these things. Not every time, but I think I can create a computer program to predict the creation of artifacts…or at least the probability associated with their creation.”

Myka nods.

“It sounds very similar to a program which Artie uses to find artifact use back at the warehouse.”

Helena jumps into the conversation.

“Not all artifacts are dangerous or have these horrible consequences from their use. It’s just that most are made during negatively charged moments…thus imparting some gruesome side-effects.”

Candice absorbs what Myka and Helena say.

“Interesting. I’ve got about thirty percent of it written, and it won’t be too much longer.”

Helena addresses everyone.

“So are you all okay with taking on this artifact problem? I imagined everyone wouldn’t be keen for it. Most of us escaped the Earth and believed we were going to do something else. Not come to a new world and handle their artifact problems here.”

Helena reaches over and squeezes Myka’s hand.                                                              

Myka finishes the food in her mouth before speaking.

“If you had presented this before we left, I don’t think I would have. Now? Well, I think it is an awful shame to turn my back on something which is quite clearly up our alley. Besides, we’ve got a power team here, it could have been so much worse. I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for who we have here. I think we have the makings of one super warehouse team. We got our computer expert, researcher, and analyst all in one…mostly like Artie, and we have our three key collection agents.”

The doctor clears her throat.

“Well, like it or not, I’m now a key fixture in your team. The Famori have assigned me to directly supervisor and speak for you all. You’re new here, and that always makes them nervous. They aren’t as worried about Helena, but she’s been away a while so they aren’t as comfortable with her as they used to be. Look at me as being your cultural and linguistic expert. I directly report to them and keep my reports direct and specific. Humans like to sugar-coat problems and they want to hear it truthfully and without bias.”

Helena interjects after finishing her salad and swallowing some wine.

“We found just one site, which had only one actual artifact, the rest was just junk and remains. How many sites are we looking at?”

The doctor shrugs and is cut off by Candice.

“Actually, there are approximately 1256 known war sites on this world. The one we were at today was unlisted.”

Smirking, the doctor cuts off Candice.

“Precisely what I was going to say. The Yamorians were astute planetary conquerors. They were adept and systematic in their approach which worked until they got humans involved. We are filthy creatures both inside and out, something they weren’t prepared for. Life doesn’t work the same on every world, which the Yamorians never bothered to research. They attributed their previous infection and influenza rates to bio-warfare and suicide bombs from previous species they destroyed. It was far easier to cut off a limb than research and treat the source of the problem. Our reconnaissance has suggested that they have learned from that war and have improved their filtration systems. Furthermore, we think they are doing actual research into the reasons for their failures, something they never did before. Their reproductive capacity and rate is similar to the cockroach. They have genetically inherited memory, and it is transferred to their brood. They are all female, and after birth they are impregnated with sperm which is stored in a special sack, that keeps it alive and healthy until needed. Only about a third of a percent of their brood is born male, and they are guarded on their command ships.”

Candice mumbles a quick figure in between bites.

“Three in every thousand, roughly, according to your studies you had us read. How many are born at a time? That was omitted.”

Helena studies everyone’s faces as she replies.

“Four to six per egg sack. Gestation in the sack is about four to six days depending on the environmental conditions: warmer faster, colder slower. That’s why they were interested in this world. It would have been the best possible world to establish a birthing center. The majority of this world is tropical or sub-tropical. It took us decades to cleanse the planet of their brood. They were adapting to the disease which came naturally and it was a good thing their military command never discovered that fact.”

Candice fires back a quick thought.

“But they did, didn’t they? It doesn’t take a genius to see that the reason you are preparing for war is because they figured it out or found out somehow.”

The doctor nods solemnly.

“The Famori experts insist it’s not possible, but our experts are saying otherwise. That’s why I wanted warehouse agents brought into this. You all think not just outside the box, but outside the room the box is sitting in. I had hoped through your investigation, you could find out how or why they are advancing their military expansion again; but now this artifact problem is going to absorb all of your attention. I still want to deploy you all into the field, it’s just going to take a bit of time management to make that happen now.”

Helena, having finished her lasagna, cleans her mouth and refills her wine glass.

“Well, I recommend Anna for that direct task. She’s had some extensive interaction with the Russian military in her past, as have I with various military units. Myka is superb with a weapon and in investigations, but I honestly think it will take some training to get her used to direct military actions.”

Myka, momentarily taken back, opens her mouth to protest.

“Hey! Okay, fine I’m not skilled in GI Joe work, but I’m fully capable.”

Putting her hand atop Myka’s, Helena apologetically replies.

“Oh, I’m not saying that you aren’t. I’m just saying that you need some training before going out with the military reconnaissance units. It requires some specialized training, that’s all. Karla, can we get a couple of our people to come by give us some training on their hand signals, and procedures?”

Nodding the doctor replies in between bites.

“That’s exactly what their commander wants to happen. He insists you all have a few weeks of training before he has any of us come along. AND…I have insisted that they have basic artifact handling training. We all know what can happen if just one unknowing person handles one of these things.”

Anna nods.

“Dah. When do we start?”

 


	8. “The Wreckage”

Anna glides quietly through the foliage, careful not to disturb her surrounds too much. Toting a heavy pack on her back, she crawls along the ground trailing behind their burly Australian jungle guide. Immediately behind her the inept and out of her element Candice manages to break and rustle every leaf and twig Anna had managed to miss. Anna glances to her left and right to see Helena and their young doctor silently moving alongside her, with Myka trailing in Helena’s wake. Though not as adept as their guide, Myka was far more proficient than their statistician Candice. With all of the hand signals down, Anna was selected to be the second in command while in the field. She had thought Helena or the doctor might have a problem with their guide’s decision, but it was obvious after three weeks, they had no qualms with her position.

Anna found herself constantly redefining her preconceptions of her team mates since the moment they arrived. Though she knew Helena was a superb field agent when it came to artifacts, she imagined she would excel in the reconnaissance missions out in the field as well. In reality, Helena needed a great deal of practice to overcome her natural body movements which undermined her stealth in the brush. The same went for Myka and the doctor, but with Doctor Karla she had obvious experience which carried over into the field. As the only one who could double as the medic, she was excluded from the command structure during movement. Though she and Helena were technically the leaders, Karla reminded them she wouldn’t always go out into the field with them so it was important to break the team into two parts.

After a series of lengthy meetings, the decision was made that each team would have an equal number of armed security officers with them. Though Anna preferred her Tesla Rod, she admitted a rifle was much quieter and could lay down better covering fire. When it came to weapon handling, her preconceptions were dead on with everyone except Karla. Myka and Helena turned out to be deadly shots with whatever weapon they were handed. And to no surprise Candice could barely handle the recoil of the small Tesla guns, to say the least an automatic pistol or rifle. It took exhaustive days at the range to break her in, and even longer to get her to score a hit on a target intentionally. After eight weeks of training, Candice had officially qualified on every weapon in their small inventory of twenty eight weapons. All during that time, she was still lagging on one key area.

Anna comes to an abrupt halt in her trek along the jungle floor, finding an unusual clearing up ahead. Like countless times before, Candice’s hand suddenly lands in between Anna’s thighs, mere inches from her crotch. Anger boils in her eyes and she turns around to see Candice’s apologetic expression staring at her, fully aware that she had messed up once more. Unfortunately this was not one of their training sessions, and mistakes here could have terrible consequences. Raising her binoculars to her face, she scans the remains of a crash site no more than a week old. Though reports and scans said there were no signs of life, every day in the field was a chance to perfect their skills.

Candice was everything she hated about civilians in the field, and more. She eventually broke her of makeup, perfume, and her nails being perfectly manicured even though Anna valued these things when out of the field. Until she got to know Candice, Anna had never accepted many things about women in combat. She was adept at hiding her feelings on the subject of romance, but watching Helena and Myka made her heart ache for the first time in a great many years. She abandoned her childhood at the young age of nine when her father was murdered by Chechnya rebels for his refusal to deliver a dangerous artifact from the Russian vault. She was tied to a chair to watch his torture and eventual disembowelment, and devoted her life to the military. An important relative in the government took her in, and trained her to continue where her father left off at, and added Spetsnaz or Special Forces training to her gymnastic and acrobatic regiment. The fire of hatred had burned like a wild fire in her heart, and she let no form of weakness get in her way well into her twenties. Though she had many boy toys, she was finding there was a widening hole in her soul, which seemed no one had been able to fill. Devotion to the duty of artifact collection and protection filled her private desires to mend the developing weakness in her heart.

Brushing aside her welling emotions, she studies the Yamorian scout ship, broken and torn apart from a bad landing. With the vegetation burnt clear for 300 hundred meters around the ship, there was no stealthy approach possible especially in their dark green jungle camouflage uniforms. They spent half an hour traveling around the ship until they sure nothing moved or detected any life sign from their equipment.  The two security troops lead the approach to the entrance of the ship without any of their researchers. This is the term they called everyone other than security troops, which privately wore Anna raw.

After five excruciating minutes, they signal the all clear and the rest of the team proceeds to the exterior door they opened. Almost immediately a sterile odor of ozone and disinfectant assailed their noses. Traveling through the craft they find the remains of three Yamorians in various broken and torn conditions. Candice pushes past the bodies, obviously grossed out, to find their ship still partially powered and begins downloading their database. Chuckling, Anna heads straight to the horribly disassembled aliens and begins taking readings. Myka and Helena begin doing an inventory of the ship’s contents, while the security troops take out their three-dimensional recorders to chronicle their mission for future review. Sean, their Australian commander, totes his carbine at the ready so that nothing can get the drop on him. This was typical for the commando; suspicion and caution were always present at every mission. Karla settles in front of the first body with the security officer recording every moment.

Anna always imagined the doctor would be colder and less emotional, mostly due to her prior interactions with military doctors. Instead of a dry and emotionless robot, Karla was a loud and wild woman confined in the body of a preteen. Anna had to keep reminding herself that this young girl was over five times her age, and often underestimated her abilities with guns and martial arts. She only carried two weapons and her favorite was the 45 caliber Baby Desert Eagle. With such a diminutive girl, it was comical to see her wield the gun which looked so large in her small hand. Her other weapon, a short Katana or Ko-Katana, was apparently a gift from a Japanese sword maker who lived somewhere on the Famori planet. The doctor’s underlying strength was also something Anna couldn’t conceive. Candice described Karla’s strength as freakish, as she could do a wall climb using only her fingertips.  

Anna breaks the silence of the tomb-like ship by talking to the recorder.

“The Yamorian subjects were apparently caught off-guard when they hit a pocket of extreme gravity while going a high rate of speed. Their internal organs are mush, as are their brains.”

The security guard is visibly taken back, more by the information than the resulting carnage. Karla continues with her evaluation in her usual airy child voice.

“His cranial section looks like it hit a panel…up here… and killed him instantly. I suggest we call for an extraction team to tote this ship and the bodies to a lab to dissect further.”

Anna extracts a globe from a small box in her pack and begins walking around the ship. The shimmering globe slowly begins to swirl and glow with red light as Anna walks the inner perimeter of the ship. One of the devices Candice was partially responsible for designing was a bona fide artifact detector. She rationalized that all artifacts must operate on some frequency or another and in the past six weeks the scientists were able to find it and inject a reactant gas to illuminate in the presence of an artifact. Anna is surprised that the globe comes to life almost immediately, and she paces slowly until she reaches the cargo section of the ship. The brightness of the globe nullifies the dull green light from the ships illuminated panels, and Anna finds three of the cargo bays were blown out from the inside of them. Dark soot and debris litters the cargo bay, and she recognizes parts of the doors and walls around her feet. Motioning for Helena and Myka they see the exaggerated readings from the globe and are amazed that the globe shines so brightly when brought to the only intact cargo bin remaining. Nervously Myka unlocks the bin and slowly opens the door. Sitting in a long metal tray, dozens of small plastic boxes contain various bits of trash, jewelry, and items from the Famori, Earth, and some stuff even Helena couldn’t identify.

Pooling their purple bags, they have just enough to bag all the items so they could throw them together in their packs without reacting with each other. As they get the last bag put away, Myka realizes the situation the Yamorians encountered.

“OH MY GOD! They didn’t isolate the artifacts right!”

Helena and Anna nod in unison, and take a quick final look of the devastation. Anna breaks the momentary silence.

“So where did they get all these artifacts?”

 


	9. “The Path”

Sitting at the dinner table of their villa, Candice mulls over the ship’s logs and data recorders getting a detailed picture of the crew’s final hours. Most of her work was done by the translation program, but the data recorder hadn’t been purged in over six months of service. Unfortunately this was a common trend she saw with all the Yamorian ships, be it the small fighters or their heavy battleships. Without a common reference point, Candice assumed this wasn’t as important as she perceived. Yet, the data wouldn’t let her stop calculating a common purpose, a pattern only her subconscious mind perceived.  Inputting the data into another program, she begins to visually match the start/stop points and overlays the data with the last four recoveries they responded to. The computer informs her of a twenty minute wait time and she closes the lid and strolls into kitchen. Taking out a tall jug of pinkish-orange liquid which passed as orange juice from the refrigerator, she pours a tall glass. After downing half of it, she refills it, puts the jug away and passes by the weight room.

With their team taking every opportunity to get fit, Candice had to admit she felt much sharper than usual. The morning runs followed by afternoon hikes through the jungle was conditioning her body better than any MMA workout she’d done previously. Spending the afternoon hacking and cutting through the jungle was exhausting work. Worse, the same path was usually completely regrown, as if they’d never been there. Helena admitted to her that this was normal for all the forests of the planet, and Karla said it was because the trees and vegetation were seen an extension of the land. When they are injured, they heal, but there were areas which never regrew. Mostly major battle sties from the first war, the land seemed like it could never heal from the damage the Yamorians inflicted. Karla mentioned once during a hike that the relationship the Famori have with their planet is unique.

“They see it as a symbiotic or parasitic relationship. When they are in harmony its symbiosis; and when they impose their will over the land, they see it as parasitic. The research I’ve seen implies they are correct. This planet is not like the Earth. It feels pain, and heals itself when it can. When we get burnt or cut bad enough, we are left with a scar. The planet does the same thing and it has areas which can never heal over with vegetation.”

An interesting fact of living on this planet was the excess of oxygen compared to Earth. Earth, which only has about twenty percent oxygen, is dwarfed by the abundance of oxygen on the Famori planet. Hovering around thirty-eight percent, the doctor assured her that it was well within safety limits for humans. The Famori who have visited the Earth were stuck inside pressure suits or toting around oxygen tanks to survive. All of the team carried around small re-breathers to reduce the quantity of oxygen if they ran into an oxygen rich zone. The equivalent to putting a paper bag over your mouth and nose, the re-breathers were rarely used.

The Famori assigned a team of workers to each compound to control the surrounding vegetation. Candice was amazed to see the workers diligently trimming or redirecting vines and roots which invaded the perimeter. Karla caught her staring in amazement at the amount of growth over the course of the night. Matter-of-factly, Karla points out Humans produce an incredible amount of carbon dioxide, compared to Famori, and the forests yearn for it. The vegetation apparently evolved to search out sources of carbon dioxide and many species were quite assertive when it came to getting what they want.

Candice could see the differences in Myka since she came back. Between the sarcasm and witty comments, she could see an inner glow she held back for when she was with Helena. She never personally or seriously entertained the thought of being with another girl, but her horrendous track record kept her from finding a good heterosexual match. Watching the two women joke and carryon, Candice could see the mutual adoration the pair shared and couldn’t deny her miniscule jealously she harbored. Her world of numbers, figures and statistical probabilities offered no solace to her empty heart. Yet as she paced the halls of their villa, her mind only buzzed with the probabilities of her passing away utterly alone on a faraway planet.

With her attention waning, she walks around the corner of the gym and avoids running into Karla by spinning backwards out of her path, only to stumble and plant her face into Anna’s chest. Anna, who had just took a break from weights, feels the lithe redhead bury her face into her cleavage with so much force that Anna stumbles backwards carrying Candice with her. As Karla scrambles forward to rescue Candice from Anna, before the Russian soldier breaks the redhead’s neck. To Karla’s surprise the redness on Anna’s face isn’t due to anger but genuine embarrassment. The first words spewing from Anna’s mouth weren’t obscenities or anger, but sheer confusion about the event. Karla pleads that she surprised Candice and thus the entire accident was by her doing, mostly to protect the poor clumsy girl from having a “training accident” out in the jungle one night. To everyone’s surprise Anna brushes off the collision and rushes to her room with little fanfare to shower. This is the first time Candice realized Anna’s emotions were as mixed up as hers; and from that moment on, Candice began to take notice of the hard-bodied soldier.

Returning to her laptop, she flips the lid open to find the data sorted notices a weird overlap on their flight paths. On approximately every ninth mission, they will pass over a dozen various points which they spend no more than fifty-three minutes orbiting a fixed point and then move on. Identifying over two and fifty points in the data, the time they spent orbiting was the key identifier. Calling over Karla, she spends the next half hour explaining that the computer verified what she saw in her head, and that it significant enough to elevate upwards. Showing confidence in Candice, Karla agrees and shows her where to send her report on the server. Most of the planet was connected in some fashion to a secure global internet which linked Famori and Humans across the globe. As she drifted off to sleep, her mind dawdles over the data and won’t stop analyzing the flight paths and stop points.

Candice is awoken by a diminutive hand shaking her awake. Her eye flutter open to find Karla dressed in camouflage holding a red lamp. In a whisper, Karla gives her a verbal list of gear to grab and tells her to be ready in seven minutes. Nodding, Candice shakes the sleep off and is standing at the outside of their villa with less than a minute to spare. Holding her tongue as to the reason to bring so much extra gear, she simply accepts her orders and follows Karla into the woods.

After an hour of tromping through the woods instead of showing off her stealth skills, Karla stops and uses the cover of night to mask her frustration.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

Candice nods.

“Yah, and I think we’re going in circles.”

Karla doesn’t try to hide her sarcasm.

“You think, huh? And when were you going to mention that little fact?”

Candice sits down beside Karla and takes out her canteen to sip.

“Well, for about the last ten minutes. I figured you had a reason, so I just let it go.”

Karla sits against a tall tree using its large protruding roots as a chair. Shifting her pack off, she detaches her canteen and takes a large swallow.

“Let me guess. Your parents never had you take dancing or any kind coordinated movement classes because you have two left feet. Right?”

Candice shrugs.

“Never in so many words I guess. Hey!”

Karla ignores her pupil’s exclamation.

“I thought Anna was exaggerating. Well until you learn how to move through the forest without attracting or disturbing every living thing in it, you’re useless on recon. Pick up your stuff, let’s go.”

Slightly hurt and confused, she gathers up her gear and follows Karla twenty feet and finds the path back to the villas. Hiding her surprise, Candice follows Karla. Rather than turning towards them, Karla leads her further into the forest. After a twenty minute hike, Karla stops and orders her to drop her pack beside hers. Candice sees tiny blue lights riddled through ought the forest. Remembering that many creatures and plants have bioluminescent capabilities, she imagines the fruit serve several functions in its life cycle, but without detailed biological studies, she couldn’t know for certain.

“I want you take your red light, go along the path into the forest, and come back. It twists a little but you will find a spring, refill your canteen and return with it full.”

Candice shrugs, sets her pack down and approaches the path. Karla immediately stops her.

“It’s not that simple.” She sees Candice flash her sarcastic grin, motions to follow her to the opposite side of the forest and continues.

“You must be silent on your journey, for the forest appreciates blessed silence.”

Karla picks up a large rock and zeroes in on a large tree in the forest. With a quick throw, it hits the base of the tree and suddenly flashes of blue light cover the tree and surrounding vegetation. Karla points out the luminescent fluid splattered everywhere around where the stone traveled.

“The fruit of the Dumongo tree light up after dark, and they are consumed by a bat. Now the majority of the ground creatures hate the taste of the fruit so they developed the technique of exploding against any creature that wanders by. It smells awful and seeps into your skin smelling for days, but is harmless. They are triggered by sound, not touch, so you must be very quiet.”

Shrugging, Candice buttons up the top button of her uniform, and starts walking towards the path into the forest. Karla reaches out and grabs her arm as she turns.

“Uh, lose the uniform. It’s just us girls out here, and you make too much noise already.”

Candice’s mouth drops open and before she can speak, Karla motions to hand over her clothes.

“Besides, you’ll want some clean clothes for the walk back. OH!”

Karla exclaims and opens up her pack to pull out a hat.

“You can stuff your hair into this, this crap is hard to get out of hair.”

Fuming Candice realizes she has little choice and undresses. Tossing Karla her pants and over-shirt, she is allowed to put on a pair of reef shoes, knee pads, and gloves. Handing Candice an empty canteen, she points in the general direction of the spring and tells her to take her time.

After three hours and seven trips, Candice storms out of the woods in a bright blue glow, and throws the full canteen at Karla who begins laughing. With four full canteens at her feet, Karla can only shake her head, trying to get control.

“That’s it for tonight. You’re too pissed to do it anymore. Now that you have five full canteens, you can use them to wash off the residual berry juice and get dressed. Every night you’ll be doing this until you can do it without bursting more than one berry, and then you can do it every couple of days until you can come out completely clean.”

Dripping from head to toe in bright blue juice, Candice fights screaming at Karla, and scoops out gobs of wet blue seeds from her inside her bra and throws it to the ground in disgust.

After a short walk back Candice strides into the villa, throws her underwear and bra into the washer and stomps towards her shower. Passing Helena and Myka at the table, they immediately notice the peculiar odor of the fruit and that Candice is not wearing anything under her uniform. As Myka starts to ask how and what, Helena stops her by shaking her head subtly and lays her hand atop Myka’s.

Helena speaks towards Candice as she heads into her room.

“Sweetie? After your shower, take a nap and be ready to go by lunch time. They just found another war site and they want us there to oversee the relic collection.”

Candice buries her anger long enough to nod gratefully and disappears into her room. Anna exits her room as Candice’s door slams closed.

“What is that _smell_?”


	10. “The Blue Pill or the Red Pill”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally we see Claudia get recruited.

 

Claudia Donovan had thought she had cried her last tear months ago, but every few days she was reminded that her grief was far from over. Cupping a smoky gemmed broach in her hands, she stares into the darkness unsuccessfully willing the tears to end. After an hour of this futile task, she puts the broach into a colorful handkerchief and wraps it up before stowing it in her pocket. As she lies on her bed, her depression becomes dangerously self-evident and she lacks the will to stand. Finally a knock at the door rouses her senses and she drags herself up to pry the door open. Expecting one of her fellow agents, she sucks in a breath of surprise to find the resident caretaker, Mrs. Fredrick standing at her door patiently.

“Was I disturbing you?”

Claudia quickly swipes any remnants of her tears against her arm and shakes her head.

“No, just…well, what can I do for you?”

Recognizing the red eyes and sniffles, she confirms her beliefs.

“I want you to go and meet with a person for a job position which desperately needs filling. You were specifically requested…”

Claudia interrupts her wearing a shocked and hurt expression.

“What! I thought you were preparing me for...you know…”

The wise elder regains control of the conversation and stops Claudia midsentence.

“I was! Now, if you’ll let me finish, I will say that this is exactly up your alley. Listen to the offer and if it suits you, you are authorized to take it. I mean it! We go through many candidates and you are but one of several people who are in line for the position. I will let the person explain it to you as much as he can. It’s classified, but I can tell you that if you chose to take it, you would have my blessing and confidence to do it superbly.

Claudia buries her anger as her curiosity wedges itself firmly in place.

“But you can’t tell my anything about it?”

Mrs. Frederick shakes her head.

“The driver will take you there. You must take only one bag with you, but no clothes. I will be able to forward most of your stuff should you decide to accept the offer.”

Dumbfounded, Claudia tries to keep control of her emotions with the overlapping confusion.

“Why should I take my bag if I’m only considering the offer?”

Mrs. Frederick shakes her head again and paces around the room.

“If you accept the offer, you must leave immediately and leave all your friends here, behind. The mission is critical, and I doubt you will return even if it’s a success. I can promise you some familiar faces will be there, but who and how are classified. Let’s just say I believe in you, and it is highly rewarding intellectually. As I said, right up your alley.”

Claudia stands in the middle of the room struck with fear and confusion. She shoves her hands into her pockets only to find her twirling the broach in her hand. Leena had pushed her to leave her comfort zone, and here she was facing the largest dilemma to that barrier. With her tears welling deep inside her, she shook them off and can only imagine Leena scolding her for not being braver. As she opens her mouth to decline, the broach somehow worked itself out of the handkerchief and sits in her sweaty palm. The cold gem reminds her of Leena, and she can feel her deceased soul mate chiding her endlessly across time and space.

Nodding in agreement, Claudia grabs her backpack and stuffs a few essential items into it and walks down the stairs silently as Pete and Steve joke in the dining room over lunch. She takes one last look at her friends, burning the memory into her brain. Pulling to the front of the B&B, a long black Buick pulls up and the door opens by itself. Claudia glances behind her, to find Mrs. Frederick standing at the front door. She silently nods and gives the young agent assurance that the car is safe. As it disappears down the drive, Artie comes up behind her, and inquires.

“Where’s she going?”

Mrs. Frederick takes a breath and stands more erect.

“On an errand. She’ll be back soon. And Artie, keep this between us.”

Surprised, he simply nods, grunts approvingly, and walks back inside.

 

After a couple of hours, they pull into a quaint diner, and the door opens. Claudia grabs her bag, and strides quietly inside. Before she can speak a short geeky man in a fine suit stands in the back of the diner and waves for Claudia to join him. Claudia tries to contain her excitement and rushes to join him.

“FARGO! What are you doing here?”

He hugs her and invites her to sit.

“They asked me to offer you the job. I have a limited clearance level on this project, but I can tell you it is legit. They felt a friendly face was warranted to entice you to accept it.”

Claudia sits back amazed.

“Wow. They got you out of Eureka just to offer me a job, I’m impressed.”

Fargo leans forwards to whisper.

“Claudia, if I could steal this from you, I wouldn’t hesitate. I can’t tell you any particulars, but I can say it’s a dream job for many of us in Eureka, and only a handful of us have been given the opportunity. You beat out our Sherriff Carter, our security chief, and two dozen other qualified applicants.”

Claudia smirks incredulously.

“Applicants? I didn’t apply for anything.”

Fargo can only shake his head in professional amazement.

“Yah! We know! They chose you over all of us. I know it has something to do with the work you do at the warehouse, but that is all I am authorized to mention. So far, only fifteen people from Eureka have been given this assignment location, and this job position is unique. Mrs. Fredericks has gone to bat for you, and her opinion has a lot of weight with the decision makers.”

Claudia nods her head.

“So you’re here to tell me to take it?”

“NO! I want the job…but officially yes. This job was practically made for you Claudia. You’d be a fool to turn it down.”

The waitress arrives drops off an order at their table. Claudia begins to object, but Fargo stops her.

“You know how in the Matrix when Morpheus offered Neo the blue pill or the red pill? Well that’s lunch. If you accept it, you’ll sit here and enjoy the free meal on the government’s tab before you step into a car to take you to your new job. If you refuse the meal, it means you want to go back into the matrix. Claudia, take the Red Pill! You’ll thank me later.”

Claudia looks around and notices half a dozen or more patrons staring at her, to include Fargo and the waitress. With so many eyes trained on her, Claudia stares down at her plate: a double cheeseburger, wedge fries and piece of apple pie. Claudia is unsure how long she stared at her food before she finally picked up a fry and popped it into her mouth. Laughing and carrying on with Fargo, she eyes the patrons around her and notes they are acting relieved and happy. After half an hour, and two refills of her soda, Claudia lets Fargo escort her to the waiting limousine. After exchanging a hug, Claudia climbs into the limo and jumps when a hand reaches out to shake hers. Gingerly, she takes it and collapses into a deep slumber.

Fargo watches the short man step out of the Limo and climb into the Buick Claudia arrived in. The waitress comes up behind Fargo and watches the two cars pull away.

“She’ll be heading out with your team which leaves in three weeks. Thank you for your assistance Director Fargo.”

Nodding Fargo stares intently at the limo as it disappears out of sight.

“It’s not a problem, she’s my friend. I’d do it again.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In an attempt to generate some readership in my stories, I'm using some polls to decide how to couple up my characters in Return to the World's End. The majority opinion I use.
> 
>  
> 
> [survey solution](https://www.murvey.com)


	11. “Losses”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no preview

**Chapter 11**

 

Candice and Anna were dumbfounded by the quantity of artifacts the war site contained. Up to now, there were never more than two actual artifacts per site, but on this occasion they discovered five close together. As the Famori collectors carefully sifted through the buried wreckage and skeletons, it was apparent that something catastrophic occurred around the artifacts. Worse, three of the five artifacts were destroyed or broken into useless pieces, while two were left scorched but operable. Myka carefully handles the ancient can opener with her purple gloved hands, turning it over and over.

“You know what this reminds me of Helena? The ship we found. Maybe the artifacts got too close to each other and reacted negatively. It would explain why only two pieces are still salvageable.”

Helena nods. Anna brings a small box of broken pottery shards to a Famori and motions to take it out of the grave site. Wearing the purple gloves, it steadily climbs out of the pit and hands it to another waiting Famori as Karla speaks in softs whistles to their Famori counterparts. A pair at the edge of the pit nod, disappears for few minutes, and return with more body bags. Karla shakes her head in disgust.

“Most of these people were churned up and torn asunder by what happened here, almost like they were thrown in a blender or something. They were kept whole even when they hit the ground, but their parts were only held together by static force. Even their clothes were sliced apart, but were held together somehow. This definitely looks like the work of an artifact.”

Myka carefully picks up the pieces of an ancient monocle, and slides it onto a waiting anti-artifact bag for good measure.

“I know artifacts, for the most part are bad, but I sure would like to have known what these did. For all we know they could have reacted negatively to the invaders or situation and might be a useful item against the Yamorians.”

Candice stops picking through the wreckage and stands erect hearing Myka’s words.

“You know what? I think she’s onto something. Maybe that’s what the Yamorians were doing? They were testing the effects of the artifacts and boom! It went horribly bad for everyone.”

Karla stops and begins conversing with the Famori. She climbs out of the pit and walks west with a dozen Famori. After twenty minutes she returns shaking her head.

“Damn Candice, you make this look easy. You’re right on, or at least really close. We have Yamorian wreckage nearby with dozens of dead just like ours here. As soon as they get finished digging out the flight recorder to the ship, we can get to it and salvage any data.”

Anna comes up and pats Candice on the shoulder, showing her support.

“This site is no different to several we’ve excavated. Perhaps the Yamorians knew time was limited towards the end of the war; and rather than spend countless hours sterilizing their test sites and hiding their evidence, they just bulldozed the entire site. It seems to be what we’re seeing, da…yes?”

Karla nods slightly.

“Yup. And I think that’s exactly what I’ll put in my report. Oh! Command has asked us to start doing daily logs from each of us. They feel that your personal thoughts and insights might be of great value to future agents, so they want you all to write for an hour each day.”

Seeing everyone’s frustration hearing this new task requirement after their long hours at digs and missions, she raises her hands defensively.

“Hey don’t shoot the messenger! I have to do it too, in addition to my reports I already do.” 

Rather than argue pointlessly, everyone returns to their duties and work until sunset. On time, their replacement crews arrive and take over sifting through dirt and debris for any and all trace remains of bodies or artifacts.

As Karla turns to lead her people to their shuttle, she gets a ring on her cell phone. With a smile she answers but her expression suddenly turns from joy to angry horror. Ordering the shuttle pilot to rush to the capitol, half an hour away, she screams over the roar of the shuttle’s exterior engines.

“Ten minutes ago, our receiving station was attacked. Remember the place you all arrived at? The Yamorians were able to booby trap it. We lost one troop ship, and three of the new arrivals. Worse, they took out the arch on both sides. Three people in transit simply evaporated and ceased to exist, and there are great amount of wounded called in. We can’t send or receive personnel to Earth easily now. We’ll have to rely on FTL ships to get there, which we all know how Earth people love seeing UFOs. Well, I don’t have a roster on who did or didn’t make it, but these were our Warehouse construction engineers and technicians. One of which was earmarked for our team until construction was completed. I’ll know more once I can get on the ground. When we land, everyone stick close to the shuttle. I may send some of you back to prepare dinner and get cleaned up.”

Myka and Helena couldn’t miss the intense worry on Karla’s face as they traveled. She spent half the trip on her phone trying to get updates and an idea as to who survived or was injured. Despite having the apparent age of a child, Karla wore her stress no different than anyone else in her team. Landing outside the hospital, Karla is met by a tall man in his mid-forties who escorts her inside.

Half an hour passed, and as the team sat on a landing zone, they watched dozens of emergency shuttles arrive and empty their bellies with injured personnel. The reality of the war finally sinks in for them, seeing people with grotesque injuries and wounds rushed into the hospital one after another. Until now, the idea that they were going to fight a war was unreal and incomprehensible. Sitting in their shuttle with the ramp down, watching the stream of wounded and dead rushed into ward, was a wake-up call for all of them. Candice, sitting towards the front, leans over into the cockpit and gets the attention of their Famori pilot. In a whisper, she asks his opinion.

“Was it always like this? I mean during the war.”

The green leafy pilot shakes his head. On Candice’s translator she reads his reply.

“No. It was worse. We rarely had access to hospitals.”

Candice slips back into her seat cold and sorrowful. For another twenty minutes, they watch the flurry of activity across the ramp, until Karla finally returns worried but more relieved than before she left. She motions to the pilot to start up and return to the villa. She motions for Myka to come with her as she speaks.

“There’s nothing left for you all to do here. Head back and get cleaned up and rested. Go ahead and make dinner and Myka and I will return with our new team member. She’s really banged and cut up, but she’ll live. She’ll be out of it for a couple of days until her limbs fully regenerate, but she’s already awake and coherent. Thanks everyone for putting up with me. I’m so stressed. I’m not thinking straight right now.”

The assurances and support pour out of the small shuttle, and she tells the pilot to return after dropping everyone off. As Myka passes Helena, Helena reaches out and squeezes Myka’s hand, something they hadn’t been doing much of this day. Sharing a pair of weak smiles between them, Myka waves goodbye as the ramp closes shut and lifts away.

Following Karla, Myka tries keep up with the child-sized doctor as she buzzes through the wall of doctors and nurses filling the halls. Flashing their badges, they are allowed into a private ward where patients lie quietly as they recuperate. Karla leads Myka to the last bed on the left, and quietly peeks inside before leading Myka through the curtains. Myka gasps and wants to scream seeing Claudia laid out in bed asleep. Karla grabs Myka’s arm and forces her to sit. Karla pulls up Claudia’s medical records on an electronic tablet and shuffles through them.

“She’ll be able to travel soon. The regenerative socks will also sedate the patient. The process of regenerating limbs is beyond painful. We will take her back to the villa to sleep it off. That’s why you slept so much when you got here. We were regenerating the damage the cancer did inside your body. She lost both legs above the knees, and half her blood. Fortunately we replenished the blood quickly, but it’s going to take a few days to regrow the limbs. The basic bones structure is about done, but they aren’t full size yet for her age. Oh, she lost a couple of fingers too, but they regrew really fast. The socks will dissolve once the process is complete. It’s absorbed into the limb and acts as the basis for the skin once the muscle is formed.”

 Myka barely registers her words as she swipes the hair away from the front of Claudia’s eyes. Suddenly they flutter open, making Myka skip a beat and then smile.

“Hey you. Do you realize that you should be dead right now?”

Claudia tries to push herself up but stops just as quickly and lies back gingerly. She suddenly brings her left hand to her face and examines her last two fingers which had been blown off in the explosion. Amazed, she flexes them slowly and can’t hide her bewilderment.

“I had this weird dream that I had lost my fingers and legs. God, what happened?”

Myka’s loss for words catches Claudia off guard and she begins scrutinizing her immobilized legs. Before she becomes overly distraught, Karla stops her from pulling back the sheets.

“That wasn’t a dream Miss Donovan. We were able to quickly regrow your missing digits, but your legs will take a few days. Afterwards you should have full use of them with little to no physical therapy. For right now relax, rest, and you’ll come back with us to your villa. Its best you get settled in and comfortable until Warehouse One is completed.”

Myka turns to Karla surprised.

“One? Shouldn’t it be fourteen?”

Karla simply shakes her head.

“Not really. This will be the first Warehouse on this planet, and if they did name it fourteen, everyone would ask why we skipped fourteen back on Earth. It’s best they just begin from scratch here.”

Claudia interjects quickly while a hole in the discussion exists.

“Who else from the Warehouse is here? Mrs. Frederic only sent me to the meeting.”

Myka smiles broadly.

“Well, there’s me and H.G. and not to mention that Russian agent we met in Seattle. You’ll meet the entire team when you’re up for it.”

With some of the pain radiating from her legs, Claudia finds the idea of drifting asleep tempting.

“That’s awesome. I think I’ll take a nap now. Oh, who didn’t make it from the Eureka?”

Karla tries to dodge the question, but Myka and Claudia refuse to let her escape without replying.

“Well Dr. Hodges died at the scene, as did Miss Carter, Dr. Monroe, and…Dr. Fargo. Fortunately most of the engineers made it to safety, but the loss of our key designers and staff has set us back. I’m sorry, I’m aware you and Doctor Fargo were close friends. I’m going to get the discharge nurse. Excuse me.”

 Myka comes around to Claudia’s right and holds her hand as she cries herself to sleep.

 

When Claudia wakes, the sun is piercing through the closed shades of a villa similar to something she’d imagine in the Caribbean or some tropical locale. As she tries to push aside the painful loss of her dear friend Douglas Fargo, she realizes her feet suddenly moved. Scared to see how mangled her legs might appear, she tentatively lifts the sheets to see two perfect legs laying where they should be attached to her. Shaking, she touches her legs and feels exactly what she’d expect to feel if she touched her legs. Rubbing her finger up and down the length of her thighs, she can discern no seam or indication that her legs were ever lost. Watching her toes flex and move, she lets her breath go, relieved that she’s intact. She jumps when there’s a knock at the door, and she throws the sheet back over her naked form. She scans the room, and is relieved to see the chair beside the closet doesn’t have a set of neatly folded clothes sitting on it.

She watches the door slowly open and the child-like Karla enters carrying a medical bag, very similar to Artie’s. Throwing on a warm smile, she closes the door behind her and drags a chair beside the bed. Wearing bright red sweats, and matching house shoes, she sits down and opens her bag to extract a laser thermometer and an imager to view the condition of her legs. Claudia can’t help but feel weird have a kid examine her.

“So are you like Doogie Houser or something like that, a child genius who’s a doctor now?”

Karla looks at her with a confused expression.

“I’ve never heard of Doctor Houser, but I’m far older than I appear kid.”

Claudia is taken back.

“Kid? How old can you be? Twelve? Fourteen?”

Proudly, Karla lifts the sheets Claudia’s legs and runs the imager over the newly regenerated legs.

“I’ll have you know that I’m very young looking for my age. Anyone who can complain that they look too young after celebrating their 128th birthday is a major accomplishment in my book. My ex couldn’t get passed that, so I’m on the market once again. Now enough of me. How do your legs feel?”

Dumbfounded, Claudia stared blankly at the small white-haired doctor.

“Uh…fine.”

Karla looks inside the pale legs of the new warehouse caretaker. With the seamless replacement a success, Karla is noticeably relieved. Taking out a small wand with a bulbous end and tiny probe-like tip on the other end, she hands it to Claudia.

“Now, you can remove the diaper with this. It’s a sonic destabilizer. Just flip the switch and rub it over the top of the green diaper to get it off.”

Confused, Claudia instinctively reaches down and is momentarily shocked when the waist band of the diaper doesn’t separate from her hips like underwear should. Karla represses her laugh.

“Let me show you.”

She lifts off the sheets around Claudia’s waist, flips the sonic device on, and guides Claudia’s hand as the soothing waves permeate through the diaper. After a few seconds, the diaper suddenly pops free of Claudia’s skin and she can see her hips. The soothing vibrations make Claudia forget her situation and location, and her eyelids seal together enjoying the waves of relief spreading through her as Karla guides the device over the diaper. Starting with the waist, she runs the bulbous end of the wand in small circles around the edges until the diaper has expanded to three times its size, completely free from Claudia. Leaning on Claudia, Karla continues the small circles until half of the diaper is off Claudia. As Karla begins to dip the wand down further, she suddenly realizes where her hand was about to go and is overcome with embarrassment. Her cheeks explode into bright red patches. Releasing Claudia’s hand in shock, she steps away while stammering her apologies.

“I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me. Um… you get the idea what you need to do. I’ll let you finish up here, and I’ll be outside…um…in my room. Clothes and everything you need are in your closet. Myka and the team will be back in a few hours. I’d appreciate your help with dinner. Try and stand before I go.”

With sweat beading on her brow, Claudia nods, and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. Using one arm to cover her chest, Claudia slowly slides off the high bed and lands on her feet. Expecting her legs to collapse, she instinctively throws both arms to the bed to stop her fall, only to discover her legs are fully ready to go. Walking in a circle, she forgets she’s topless and is surprised when Karla hands her a robe. Karla excuses herself and shuffles quickly to her room. Slamming her door closed, she curses under her breath and looks to the ceiling. 


	12. “Realizations”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long delay, but a number of projects absorbed every free moment I've had for months now. I’ll be making regular updates in a week or two, after I go on vacation and get my head back into this story. Enjoy what I have done for now.

Claudia wasn’t very impressed with the selection of clothes which were in her dresser. Though the eight sets of varying degrees of green were initially cool, the next six sets of grey, blue, and black camouflage uniforms blew her away. Two thirds of her dresser had camouflage uniforms and the rest had undershirts and socks for the uniforms. Just when she thought she had been drafted, she opened her closet to find eight sets of clothes from the bed & breakfast hung up. Furthermore, there were drawers inside the closet which held a large amount of her clothes which did not need to be hung up.

After her shower, she discovered the first evidence that her legs were regenerated. In the bedroom as she sat on the bed to put on a pair of shorts, the outside light illuminated a noticeable tan line around each of her thighs which wasn’t there prior to her accident. Worse the line was opposite of what she expected. Rather than concealing her lack of a tan higher up her thighs, it revealed no tan below the mid thighs. And if it couldn’t get worse, she looked at her regrown finger and discovered the same lack of color as if she had put sunblock onto just one finger.

Exiting her room, she finds Karla making herself a sandwich while reading a report. She nearly jumps out of her skin as she turns around to discover Claudia standing quietly by the dinner table.  

“GOD! How long have you been standing there?”

Claudia shrugs nonchalantly.

“A minute, I guess? Hey, I just noticed I have reversed tan lines on my legs. What’s up with that?”

Nervously, Karla walks around Claudia to sit her lunch on the table.

“Well, that’s because they haven’t been exposed to the sun yet. You have raw, undamaged skin the way that God always intended, so to speak. You just need to make sure you stay out of the sun, or wear a lot of sunblock for a few months. You will burn easily. I’ll set up a schedule if you like so you can spend a few hours a week getting them sunned or tanned, whatever you call it. We have a female only team, so you have a lot of freedom to dress as liberally as you wish.”

Surprised by this revelation, Claudia can’t miss Karla’s skittishness around her and continues to breach Karla’s personal zones by getting into the meek doctor’s face.

“Wow, so no guys huh? Explains a lot. So how I go about expanding my wardrobe?”

“Well, I’ll get you a catalogue and you can submit your orders through it. Right now we don’t have a monetary system in place, so everything is tailored according your registered stats and they make it accordingly to your individual file.”

Karla opens a catalogue she had on the table and points out a reference sheet at the very end.

“So if you want this dress to be skin-tight but five percent extra to breath, then you put a zero in the first block, and a point zero five in the second block. This material is very stretchy, so five percent is more than enough, but leather…well, I wouldn’t go less than fifteen or twenty percent on a material like that, unless you’re making a strait jacket. Now, the zero in the first block means you want it exactly your dimensions, and the numbers in the second block say how much over your exact size you want it. If you want it an inch and a half over your size, you put a one point five in the first block and nothing in the second. Just remember that the second block is a percentage over, or under if you put a negative number in there. So a point one, would be ten percent or about three inches around your chest, two and a half inches around your waist, and about three and a quarter inches around your hips.”

Claudia, having drifted close to Karla, gets the reaction she was looking for as Karla suddenly realizes Claudia’s proximity, moves, and puts a chair between them before continuing.

“Now, you can put in a special order form which details precise numbers for each of your measurements, which I have done a few times. When you have the body of a ten or twelve year-old long enough, you sometimes like to have some precise control over your clothes, especially when making lingerie. Now I have a dozen hot outfits and no one to wear them for. Fortunately, I won’t be leaving these measurements anytime soon, but that still doesn’t change my status. Oh! If you have skills, you can design your own clothes; but unless you are very skilled, it can take a few weeks to hammer out a standardized pattern. This individualized method of making clothes reduces waste at the sacrifice of time. It takes about a week or two to get your order.”

“Speaking about individualized, do you always give your patients that level of care? I mean with the little sonic thing.” Claudia says it as seriously and matter-of-factly as she can muster without cracking a smile. She practically has to pinch herself to keep from laughing as she watches Karla turn all shades of red and squirm uncontrollably before her.

“Look…some of these Famori devices have unexpected effects on humans, and I…I…”

Claudia imagines she’s tortured the young doctor long enough and ends the conversation by dispassionately nodding and dismissing Karla’s stammering, and returns to her room, secretly wearing a huge grin. After closing her door, she relaxes and whispers to herself.

“Claudia, Claudia. You shouldn’t have enjoyed that so much.”

 

After another long day of archeological digging, or as Myka referred to it “crime scene investigation,” they once again return to their rooms exhausted and covered from head to toe in dirt and mud. Helena and Myka are the first come out of their rooms showered and changed as Claudia and Helena toil away at an alien roast. Claudia, unimpressed with Helena’s praising of the low methane producing version of a cow, still doesn’t sway her with sticking to the vegetables. Seeing Myka stroll towards the dining area holding Helena’s hand, Claudia jumps from the table and envelopes her friend in a hug. After a few moments, she breaks the hold and gives a brief hug to Helena before finally greeting Candice.

Helena motions for Candice to help her set the table as she addresses everyone.

“The command confirmed the attacks were the first stage of a new Yamorian war against this world. They’ve isolated it from immediate reinforcements from Earth, so we can expect renewed warfare. At least this time the Famori are ready for war, versus the first time.”

Helena reflects momentarily the loss of life and grotesque bloodshed she survived and squeezes Myka’s hand for comfort.

“We’re far more prepared than the first time, but there’s no doubt we can’t win like we did the first time. We truly got lucky. Command estimated that they lost 85% of their forces when they became infected, so we can expect they have developed immunities and contingencies to the germ warfare aspect.”

Candice throws her thoughts out from across the kitchen.

“Hey! Everything I’ve read says they’ve developed new tactics to this age old problem, but these artifacts add a new aspect which has no military basis.”

Claudia shakes her finger.

“Oh contraire! There are many military uses for some artifacts; but either the cost for using it or the horrid effects keeps sane people from doing it.”

Myka’s eyes brighten as she interjects.

“Well that explains it. The Yamorians don’t understand that concept. They don’t comprehend the negative toll using these things can take from you. They must view artifacts as some super weapon which they must tame and militarize.”

Helena nods.

“And they wouldn’t be the first. Many humans have gone that route, only to have it blow up in their faces. Artifacts should be kept out of the hands of the military. Period.”

Karla swoops in with dinner and motions for everyone to sit.

“And that’s exactly what we are trying to do here. Claudia will be the first caretaker for this world, and hopefully we’ll get control of these artifacts which are popping up like rats in a sewer.”

Anna strolls from her room and smiles warmly to Claudia, recognizing her.

“It’s good to see you again little one.”

Taken back, Claudia smiles and greets her.

“Wow! We have an all-star team here!”

Myka leans over to emphasize her words to Claudia.

“We’re in the NBA now? Does that make us the Mavericks, Spurs, or the Lakers?”

From across the table Candice interjects as she begins to eat.

“Hey, I’d take being compared the NBA versus the Globetrotters or Marx Brothers any day of the week.”

As the laughter rolls around the court, Karla nervously whispers to Helena.

“What are Globetrotters or NBA?”   


	13. “The Jungle”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team's mission to ensure no artifacts are left behind, discover how dangerous an OCD can be when an artifact gets involved.

Stepping carefully down the space shuttle’s cargo ramp, the team spreads out while stowing their helmets in their duffle bags. Claudia scrutinizes their landing site and points towards their destination miles away. 

“And why couldn't we get dropped off a little bit closer? That’s what…ten miles away?”

Rolling her eyes, Helena begins getting out of her space suit, revealing her jungle camouflage underneath. Helena and Myka help each other out of theirs, while Anna and Candice do the same. Helena motions for Claudia to release the locking collar on her suit as she continues.

“Try four miles. This is the closest the shuttle can drop us off without crashing into a tree or something. Down there is the wreckage of a Yamorian battle cruiser which soft-landed here towards the end of the last war. This planet was our closest neighbor and we were able to police it and prevent any scavenging by the Yamorians. Our tech scavengers already cleansed the site decades ago…about thirty years after the war.”

Myka pulls off her suit and sits on the ground as she interjects after Helena.

“But you all had no idea about these relics, did you?”

Karla shrugs as she peels out of the pressure suit and changes into her jungle boots.

“If we knew about that, we’d be in a better position today. Instead, we’re playing catch-up and trying to wrangle in all these loose strings.”

Candice stands after changing and helps Anna unload the camping gear from the shuttle. Dragging out six crates, the shuttle comes to life and leaves the six agents dressed in jungle attire gazing towards the artificial mountain of trees and foliage. Due to the lack of violence from its landing, the two mile-long space ship was rather quickly incorporated into the jungle valley it crashed within. Gigantic trees were rooted from the very top of the vessel, deceptively appearing as a small mountain rising from the relatively flat jungle around it. With over a hundred years of growth atop it, the ship was a silent memorial to the crew who had died on reentry. Helena points towards the forward half of the ship as she speaks.

“Observers and computers recorded a heavy missile salvo striking their bridge right before it dropped out of orbit. They entered the atmosphere at a poor angle and it caused the internal temperatures to skyrocket. Nothing was left alive on the lower half of the ship, which was the troop transport section, and the lower ten decks of the thirty were practically fused together on impact. The reconnaissance team estimated the lowest temperature in the rest of the ship was nearly 290 degrees Celsius. The poor creatures were cooked alive. The computers did a great job crash-landing the ship; unfortunately no one survived the reentry to appreciate the brilliant work.”

Candice grimaces as Claudia motions for her help her load the crates onto the hover sleds. Not looking forward to dragging the 170 pound crates through the jungle by hand, she was thrilled Helena had requisitioned the state-of-art hover rafts. Once activated, the seven-foot long and three-foot wide flat beds could double as gurneys if anyone was severely injured. With only three at their disposal, they carried all their food, water, and gear for their four day stay on the alien planet. Donning their jungle hats, they pull down the mosquito nets on their hats to keep the unknown varieties of stinging and biting insects at bay from their skin. With a wave, Karla leads the team into the jungle with a monstrous mechanical beast carving a path for them. Akin to a four-foot tall lawn mower/chipper on steroids, it rips and shreds the vines and branches effortlessly leaving a saw dust path for the team to follow.

By midday, Karla shuts off the mower and presents the goliath ship for their inspection. Claudia couldn’t help but be in awe seeing a real spaceship up close for the first time. Myka comes up behind and whispers in her ear as everyone sets their gear down to make camp.

“Breathe Claudia, breathe.”

“Myka! I’m standing in front of a real spaceship! This is incredible!”

Claudia can’t take her eyes off the gargantuan craft lying dead in the jungle.

“It’s funny though…I’ve seen ships like this in Japanese anime. I can’t remember which, but this cylindrical design is very familiar.”

Karla takes out her computer and verifies their proximity to the breach in the hull the original surveyors recorded over seventy years prior. She directs the mower towards the ship and has it plow a seventy-five foot wide circle for their camp before sending it towards the breach. Karla finally interjects as she works the controls.

“We’ve had many contractors over the years from all around the globe. This Command Cruiser is a simple design with twelve decks. The upper two and the lower seven are incredibly tall, about seventy to eighty feet each. It accommodated their assault and troop deployment craft. The center three decks were regular sized, which housed the crew and troops in barracks-style living arrangements. The lower seven decks were compacted in the crash; with the ship on attack status when it entered the atmosphere, the majority of the salvage was lost. I remember a professor or doctor Kawamori who was integral in recreating the ships and space stations the Yamorians had. No idea what happened to him after he returned. Everyone signs secrecy agreements, so I can imagine a few weren’t entirely faithful to the agreement.”

Helena nods as she remembers doing the same.

“I took liberties with the retelling of the war, so I imagine others have done the same over the years. It’s possible someone over the years took the designs and made them into some original works like I did.”

Karla navigates the mower to the jagged tear in the ship’s hull, clears the area of the vines and branches, and orders it to shutoff a safe distance away. Satisfied, she sets the controller in a box and begins explaining to Claudia and Candice how to set up the camp and portable science stations as the rest of the team drops their packs and don their recovery gear. Simple light armor and utility belts complement their usual uniforms, but could be a life-saving combination when entering a decrepit structure as the one laying before them. Karla hands the trio a map and opens one of her own to point out their destination. After a few minutes, they depart and begin their trek into the darkened passages of the ship.

 

The maps, reproductions from the first exploration decades prior, were more accurate than Anna imagined.  The prior team painstakingly constructed ramps and simple elevators to reach the highest levels of the massive spaceship, and Anna was simply amazed that they were still in place and safely usable. Choosing to reach the highest deck first and work down, the team extracts the scanners Candice and Claudia had perfected for detecting “Artifact Energy” or simply AE. Spiking and surging erratically, it strains their emotions and nerves. Sweeping the decks in a systematic pattern, they cover the first deck and don’t leave empty-handed. The object, no larger than a racket ball, resembled an object associated with a child's ball, used to train the young after they hatch. Quickly bagging it, Anna watches their equipment gently calm down but not entirely. Exhausted, Anna checks her watch only to become flabbergasted. Motioning to stop, she has every check their own watches before heading to the next level. Myka’s jaw drops open and checks hers against Helena’s, then Anna’s. She lets her frustration go, and realizes she’s not alone.

“I swear I just checked this and it had only been four hours! Am I going nuts?”

Helena rechecks her watch against everyone’s and shakes her head in disbelief. She watches as Anna takes out her canteen and swallows it voraciously, and instinctively does the same. 

“No, same here. I swear I checked mine ten minutes ago and it had only been just over three hours. I think I was so focused on finding it, that I blocked everything else out.”

Anna nods, and takes out her second water bottle and drinks half of it and motions for Myka to do the same. She looks down at her uniform and see’s she doused from head to toe in sweat.

“Dah! We have all lost time and the same amount. If we hadn’t of found the artifact in time, we would have died of dehydration. I remember in the original report that they lost four of their team to inexplicable conditions like dehydration and overworking. This item made us so focused on finding it that we ignored everything else. We’re an hour overdue.”

After trying their walkie-talkies, they surmise the ship is blocking their signal and stroll back the way they came.  


	14. “OCD Fever”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> revised, edited and additional content to chapter 14

An hour slipped by at the camp, but no one really seemed to notice. Candice, preoccupied with setting up camp, finds the singular task oddly comforting. In a short hour, Claudia and Candice make short work of erecting tents and setting up the kitchen area with stones and dirt. Sweat pours down their brows as the combined heat and work squeezes the life from their pours. Karla, working tediously to isolate the pheromones of the vicious alien mosquito pestering the crew, ignores everyone around her. By the second hour, having completed every task on Karla’s list, Claudia motions for Candice to join her at the make-shift table in the kitchen area. Nothing more than a folding table to prepare and cut the food, they pull up chairs. Taking out a small metal suitcase four inches thick, Candice shakes her head recognizing the contents. Taking out a deck of cards, Claudia grins as she closes the case of poker chips, retaining a used deck from “Hannah’s” Las Vegas. Through the bug net, Candice can clearly make out Claudia’s Cheshire grin. Claudia takes out the cards and shuffles quickly as she speaks.  
“What? Did you seriously think I’d go trillions of miles from any internet connection without bringing something to do? I got this as a gift from Arty. He was able to forward this to me somehow. That man can read minds sometimes.”  
With her curiosity getting the best of her, Candice takes out her AE scanner and runs it over the cards and sets it down to her left.  
“Okay, deal me in.” 

Candice understood how addictive the game could be, and she was keenly aware that people regularly become addicted to playing, but nothing prepared her for the drive she was experiencing. Card after card was drug into her hand and she feverishly played as if every hand meant life or death. Every success or failure was personal in nature and only drew her deeper into the next game. As the cards slide back into the deck, shuffled, and redistributed, the pair forget their mission and purpose for nestling against the shadow of the massive ship embedded into the forest around them. Sweat pours down their brows, either from the stifling heat or the building stress, and they hardly give it a thought. Even the buzzing insects mattered little to the pair, despite their attempts to overcome the nets protecting the card players.  
As the pair slowly dehydrates from the sweltering heat, Karla religiously examines the vicious mosquitoes and tests what can be done to detract them from being drained of life fluids. The bugs, unable to pierce simple cloth, were still a real threat to exposed flesh. Drinking up to twenty times their weight and mass in blood, the small thieves were insatiable. Karla refused to accept defeat, and pressed on in her search for a miracle chemical to detract the biting insect. Testing and synthesizing countless chemicals, each only fractionally different from the other, fills her time as the hours drift by unnoticed. Isolating the chemical which drove the insidious insects insane with hunger, and the one which caused them to retreat in horror consumed her every thought. Rising from her chair, she paces around the make-shift laboratory comparing the test results and remixes the chemicals to retry her test once again. Test after test, she comes up empty-handed and resumes her incessant quest for enlightenment.  
Even as the pair collapses onto the make-shift poker table, Karla doesn't flinch as she rises and throws herself into diagnosing her unconscious team mates. It takes little skill to recognize heat exhaustion and the beginnings of heat stroke. Using the hover-sled, she transports her team to the tent and gets them out of the sun. After getting both of them tucked away and grabbing a kit, she ensures none of the biting insects are in the tent before undressing them and getting them cooled down with emergency ice packs. Her cold and calm exterior hides her urgency as she puts in IVs to pump fluids into them. As she puts in her last, she collapses next to them and proceeds to put in her own IV, before she finally loses consciousness herself.  
Shaking off her drowsiness, Karla lifts herself up on her elbows and looks over her teammates. With the IV bags nearly empty, she observes that hers is empty and carefully removes the needle from her arm. Impressed that she actually hit her own vein in her condition, she smiles to herself and cautiously stands. Finding a canteen, she down half of it and breathes a sigh of relief. Thinking back, she is dumbfounded with how she behaved. Measuring it against her long history and her inexcusable behavior with Claudia in her bed, she rates it horribly close to forced resignation upon her return. Donning her protective garments, she replaces the IV bags on her two patients and sets a cold water soaked rag on each of their foreheads before returning to her duties at her lab outside. In an hour, her patients begin to stir and she sets about mass producing her freshly designed bug repellent.  
Spraying the entrance of the tent, she watches as the mosquitoes fly away in horror and refuse to come less than fifty feet near the tents. Odorless, the repellant’s life expectancy is something she’ll test while on planet, and she makes the appropriate annotations in her logs. With the entrances of the tents having a small awning over the doorway, she sprays it in this area to resist the effects of the afternoon rains, practically clockwork according to the first explorers. With the thick canopy of trees and vegetation, Karla had no idea if the rain was on its way or not, but figured it was safer to be prepared. Setting the tables on their sides and ensuring nothing could fly around should the winds pick up as well, she was setting her lab inside a work tent when Candice surprised her to help move the equipment. With a simple grimace and smile through her fly net, Helena shakes her head comically and points her along the mulched path to the tent.  
As they set the last piece of equipment in place, a thunderous clap of thunder and lightning sends them scurrying to the sleep tent and laughing hysterically for no good reason. Claudia, propping herself up on her elbows, is sipping at her canteen as the pair enter soaked from the short sprint, still giggling. They quickly ditch their suits and opt to walk around in their shorts and t-shirts, content with their surrounding company.

Marching out of the leaky derelict ship, they are greeted by a torrential downpour and a field of muddy grass. With the sun setting over the mountains, they trudge through the slurry mix of grass and debris while narrowly avoiding the hidden pits covered by the floating grass. Anna was the first to find one and she sunk down to her chest, while Myka found the second just ten yards from the camp and went face first into the mud. Cursing under her breath and asking why they didn't see them before it started to rain, they drag themselves into the camp to find it devoid of activity. Scoping out the two tents, they see a flicker of light from the farthest tent and discover their teammates huddled in a together sipping on coffee and tea. With them taking turns changing out of their wet and muddy clothes in the entrance of the tent, they eventually find their way to a warm sleeping bag and steaming cup of refreshment for their weary bones. Breaking out the survival rations, they appreciate the simple comfort of friendship and warm company.


	15. “The Submerging Fear”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After fixing Chapter 14, I'm finally getting out the next installment.

“I tell you, we were experiencing the same thing you were, no matter how unlikely it is.”  
Helena looks at her elder protégé and rubs her face incredulously.  
“And I can’t see the connection, Karla. We were experiencing time loss, not an outbreak of OCD.”  
Karla only shakes her head.  
“You weren’t just experiencing time loss, but a focusing of your attention at the task at hand. If I weren’t who I was, I might have thought that time was swept away as well; but in reality, I found myself focusing all my attention at completing my duty before anything else. It was this insane OCD effect, and I tell you that’s exactly what you went through in that ship.”  
Helen shakes her head and walks back to the tent to change.  
Claudia mulls over the conversation before putting in her two cents.  
“So…there’s another artifact out there?”  
Karla only shrugs. “Possibly. The artifact they bagged could have been it, we just don’t know.”  
Claudia fishes out her detector and starts waving it around in the air.  
“Well, the reading is far lower than it was yesterday. It’s like this entire place is resonating AE…I can’t get a clear direction. Are there any battlefields nearby?”  
Karla only shakes her head.  
Myka sips at her coffee and nods.  
“Helena mentioned earlier that there’s nothing down here, just fallen orbital wreckage.”  
Claudia nods, mulling over the conversational points.  
“How about this? Another relic fell down close by? Hey! I’m guessing here, kids.”  
She takes out her AE detector and walks a large circle in the camp, while the rest toss around their own thoughts. Finally, Claudia returns to the table and downloads the data to her laptop.  
“I can’t be for certain, but I have a strong AE source about 5 miles from the wreckage.”  
Skeptical, Helena looks over the data herself.  
“How can that be? We scoured this area before we left, and not to mention the countless probes that have mapped the area.”  
Claudia defensively raises her hands as she replies.  
“Hey! This thing could be small, just a small ship or section. And second, they didn’t have my gizmo! This is why I was brought here, remember?”  
Rubbing her forehead, Karla nods in agreement.  
“We were sent here to collect all artifacts, not just most of them. It will take the mower about four to five hours to reach the area, so let’s get it underway. At least we can just sit around and wait for it to reach the general area before walking up there. So, if there’s nothing there, we can have it scan the area until we find our mysterious relics, sitting safe here at base camp.”

It took the cutter nearly six hours to reach a large metallic area in the middle of the jungle. With several fallen and rotten trees covering it, it took the cutter’s remote arms another two hours to clear enough of the debris to give them access. Satisfied, they take one of the hover sleds and load some contingency gear and rations on it. The long walk filled everyone with a genuine sense of curiosity, rather than fear or concern. Claudia couldn’t help but wonder if her hypothesis correct, while Anna’s thoughts drifted to her lack of a future, beyond a professional capacity.  
She watches with envious eyes the closeness Myka and Helena openly shared and instantly buries it from her team’s perception. Her training and experience pounded the importance of remaining plutonic and avoiding any permanent relationships to protect herself from damage when her job takes a turn for the worse. When she was in the KGB, and later in the Russian Special Projects team collecting artifacts of dangerous properties, this technique was more than just convenient. With the death rate above 65%, Anna accepted her cold loneliness as more than just a defensive behavior, but a survival measure. Yet all around her, she sees her comrades defying that rule, and benefiting from it. Looking around, she surmises she either embraces her youth and gets passionately close to Karla, imagine how warm the company can be with the new redhead, or get intellectually stimulated with the super nerd. With more thought beyond her mission, it was no surprise for her when she finds another infamous hole in the ground and disappears into it. The cold water offers little compassion for her lack of attention and companionship.

Looking up from the murky void feels the air forced from her lungs as she plummets deeper than she should have for a small hole. Struggling to contain her breath, she feels a root entangle her legs and draw her deeper into the depths. As her breath streams from her nose, she feels helpless to abate the life slipping away with her breath. In her mind’s eye, she relives the death of her mother and stepfather in a car crash; she fights vomiting after smelling the distinctive aroma of burning flesh and hair. As she dribbles out her precious breath, she watches her fiancé Andrei sucked into solid rock by a Chechen terrorist with an artifact, and his last breath was mouthing his perceived failure. In the blink of her mind’s eye, she trades places with Andrei, and she’s swallowed into rock to her mouth. As she searches for air with her lips, she feels the cold embrace of death surrounding her, welcoming her into its dark depths. As her fear of loneliness and dying unloved strangles her, she feels the warm touch of life on her lips. In a last act of salvation she parts her lips and accepts the warm infusion of life back into her body. Gulping ravenously, she explodes with tears of passionate hope that love is still possible for her yet.

With a sudden splash, the team looks towards the spot Anna had once been in horror. After ten seconds they realize she wasn’t coming back up. As Karla drops to the ground and yanks off her boots, Candice jumps head first into the hole holding a flashlight. As Karla gets off her over-shirt and reaches the edge of the hole, Candice pops back up screaming.  
“She’s put her legs through a lattice work of roots and old tree limbs!”  
Karla unsheathes her knife and dives into the hole, taking Candice’s lamp as she dives. The seconds tick by, and Candice realizes Anna couldn’t possibly have taken a large enough breath to last until Karla can cut her free. As she scrambles for a solution, the only obvious one keeps popping into her head. After expelling all the air in her lungs, Candice gulps in as much air as she can muster and dives down into the darkness. Using her hands, she finds Anna’s face and wraps her mouth over Anna’s and releases her breath into Anna. Reflexively, Anna accepts the breath greedily and longs for more. Candice shoots away and returns three more time until Karla liberates Anna’s legs. Dragging her to the surface, she is lifted clear of the hole and laid on her side as she coughs and gasps for air. As Candice surfaces finally, she’s yanked out of the water and deposited next to Anna and Karla. She exclaims loudly after she gathers her breath.  
“This isn’t just a forest we’re walking through! It’s a submerged lake or river of some kind. There’s a noticeable current flowing towards where we came, and that’s why there’s so much water pooling in these holes. In these low areas, we are just inches from the water’s surface. If you turn off that mower’s hover system, it will fall through and sink to the bottom.”  
As Candice sits there while the team discusses their position, Anna reaches out and grabs her hand. With her eyes teary and bloodshot, she silently mouths ‘thank you’ before she falls back trying to regain her strength.


	16. “The Briefing”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reviewed previous chapters, made a few corrections and here's a new chapter.

Chapter 16

The extraction of the last artifact took a week longer than planned. It turned out the wreckage they found was literally the tip of the problem. The artifact and the rest of the wreckage were 130 feet further down into the water. After carefully extracting the sliver of broken ship from the depths, it was deposited on the only solid ground in 15 miles. The artifact, an eyepiece or goggle glass of some origin, exploded in sparks as it landed in the purple collection bag. The team immediately felt a gargantuan weight taken off their shoulders, only aware of it until it was gone. Candice took Claudia’s data, and buried herself in the analysis from the moment they left the ground.  
Anna was still deeply affected by her ordeal and spoke little even after they arrived back at their villa. She found herself staring at Candice amazed by the courage the unimposing girl demonstrated in a true time of crisis. Before her courageous act, Anna had kept questioning the reasoning for bringing in a completely inept agent like her, and why she was an active member of their team. With the transpiring of events, she still questioned the rationale, but understood people weren’t exactly what she perceived.  
After her years recovering artifacts, she still had so much to learn about people. Even the child-like Karla was hardly an innocent angel, and was truly an alluring adult trapped in the body of a child. Despite her brilliant intellect and maturity, Anna found it difficult to dismiss her apparent age and couldn’t imagine getting intimate with a preadolescent child, even if she was over a hundred years old. This dilemma left her with a tough choice between two redheads as she showered. During her hour-long stress-relieving bath, she submerged herself in the steaming water. Soaking up the relaxing aromas, she let the healing oils and salts permeate her body. With the water cooling, she slips out of the bath, dries off, and slides between the sheets for a well-deserved nap.  
Late in the afternoon, Anna finally drags herself out of bed, and found the villa practically empty. Walking around, she finally discovered the only occupants were Myka and Helena holed up in their room laughing and giggling. Needing little imagination to fill in the blanks, she meanders to the kitchen and fixes a sandwich. As she reaches the refrigerator, she finds a note from Karla explaining that she took Candice and Claudia to command to brief them on their findings. A side note mentions she’s bringing back dinner and “refreshments” for everyone. Unsure exactly what she means, Anna shrugs and takes her sandwich to her room to avoid listening to the sexual endeavors of her two teammates across the hall.

Landing at Command Headquarters, Karla leads her pair of experts into a conference room forty stories up. As Candice and Claudia find their seats, Karla motions for them to stand as dozens of humans and aliens enter taking their seats or places around the room. As the doors seal and an armed security officer positions himself in the doorway, Karla dims the lights and debriefs the recovery of the two artifacts. The briefing omits the specifics of the events which Claudia and Candice experienced, and it includes video excerpts from team’s shoulder camera. The data verifies that time was never lost, and it demonstrates how focused the team became inside the ship. Karla stops the video and raises the lights as she continues.  
“My team experienced a very dangerous condition, which the original excavation team experienced decades prior. Thanks to some of the new technology Agent Donovan created, we were able to identify a second artifact was present. This was not unusual in itself, as we have seen that some events periodically create multiple artifacts at the same time. What was unusual was that these two artifacts, separated by over 5 miles, were somehow interacting to create new more powerful effect.”  
Karla is surprised that Candice stands and finishes Karla’s thought. She had imagined she was too shy to speak in front of strangers, but was pleasantly surprised.  
“We nearly lost another agent when she stepped through the ground into a sinkhole of sorts. I later discovered that the “ground” we’d been travelling was just the forest canopy covering an extensive underground river system. The second artifact had somehow targeted her and when she went through the canopy, it began to demoralize her and entice her to submit to dying. We believe the focusing power of the first artifact was interacting with the second and created a powerful OCD-like effect on everyone near the river system. Only further tests can verify this. The artifacts were never in any close proximity to each other and it somehow utilized the water and forest growth as a means to connecting to the other artifact. This ability to “connect” with other artifacts on their own is unprecedented.”  
As if she just realized how brazenly she stood and presented the information, Candice sheepishly sits back down and hides her face as it turns red. Karla stands back up wearing a proud grin.  
“Exactly. We have witnessed and experienced something which has never been chronicled since artifacts have been catalogued and studied. The universe has demonstrated how unpredictable and wild it can be. My team is certain that we will continue to experience and discover interactions which can only be identified as unprecedented. This is precisely why I am requesting 2 additional agents be added to my roster. These two additional personnel will allow me to operate two independent teams and be in two places at once. I plan to have Agent Bering lead Alpha team and Agent Krylenko lead Bravo team.”  
From the back of the room, a gruff military man resembling something out of a bad war movie interjects.  
“How exactly do you intend to recruit? We lost the dimensional bridge to Earth months ago?”  
Karla simply nods before replying.  
“I forwarded my request to Mrs. Frederic months ago, before the bridge was destroyed, to develop a list of acceptable candidates in case we had openings. She knew of our unique work conditions and personnel arrangements. Just tell her to send us two more and whoever she sends will be fine.”  
Karla reads the multitude of unique reactions on the faces of the attendees, not to mention those of her own team. A leafy alien, different to what she’s seen locally, steps forward to speak.  
“Do you really think these artifacts are as proliferous as you state in your reports?”  
Karla shakes her head no.  
“No. I believe it far worse than what I stated in my early reports. These artifacts started out as simple myths, until we confirmed their existence. I think they are everywhere, but most are benign. It’s the dangerous ones we are on the lookout for, and those get the most publicity. This is why we need more people out in the field. We can’t wait until one kills a bunch of innocents before we act. We need more study and research over these artifacts; and with the coming war, it may be a discernable advantage against our enemies who ARE doing research and development.”  
Her last words weigh heavily on the assembled crowd, and it’s apparent she has her request approved, before the words are said.

The return trip back becomes very colorful as Claudia reviews Karla’s request she sent to Mrs. Frederic.  
“You want people who are extremely athletic and quick minded? I always thought that was an oxymoron, like military intelligence.”  
Candice starts to correct her teammate, but decides it’s not the time.  
“I see what you mean Claudia. We’re not all that athletic when compared to the rest of our counterparts on the team. Why us?”  
Karla nods.  
“Well, that request was sent after I knew I was going to get you both. Claudia, you are going to be the next Mrs. Frederic here, and that has nothing to do with you being an agent now. I felt it was important for you to be on the ground floor of what we are doing, for the future of the warehouses. Candice, you are brilliant and have superb athletic potential. When I got you, you had all the attributes we needed then. After you came on board, I realized I was going to need more people like Anna in the future. I don’t need that many geniuses under one roof, but I do need a great deal of field agents who can survive the rigors of what these artifacts do to each of us. You are coming along fine becoming a better agent than you were when you first arrived; but I can’t get your kind intellect just anywhere. Imagine some of your friends’ reactions to half the stuff you’ve seen so far. Do you think they would have coped as well as you have?”  
Candice simply shakes her head no, as Karla continues.  
“Exactly. I have a genius, a future head of the warehouse, and three superb field agents. I need two more field agents who can survive the rigors of recovering artifacts, and that’s what I requested. It’s not personal. I can’t imagine getting as far as we have without all of you.”  
Claudia reaches over and rubs Candice’s shoulder reassuringly.  
“I understand where she’s coming from, it’s okay. Look at it this way, would you want a bunch of clones of you around to steal your thunder? I wouldn’t. We’re unique, and irreplaceable; and the fact she isn’t trying to fill the ranks with our clones is proof.”


	17. “Everyone Has Their Day”

Chapter 17

Anna sat on the soft earth as Claudia and Candice pull off their sweat pants and over shirts. Karla sits off the side on a log, patiently waiting for the pair to enter the forest beside her. Anna looks down the second path which Claudia will enter and shakes her head.  
“So this is how you improved Candice. I don’t see how I could do this, let alone these two, Karla.”  
Karla simply shrugs and continues to wait patiently. Candice is the first to be in her and tight sports top and shorts.  
“This is why I ordered these clothes. I’m not a big runner or swimmer, but it washes out these clothes better than it does in cotton. Tucking her hair into a swimming cap, she smiles proudly for ingenuity, making Anna snicker. Claudia rolls her eyes before commenting.  
“And I thought we were going to do some remedial swimming lessons.”  
Anna watches in disbelief as Candice disappears into the foliage, optimistic and proud. Anna watches intently through her night vision goggles as Candice expertly avoids the dozens of hanging fruit, which glow menacingly. Karla whispers to Claudia as they watch.  
“Now, they are set off by sound, not touch; but if you brush against them hard enough it will create noise, and thus sets them off. I once set one off simply by my stomach rumbling. They aren’t all that sensitive; but a few are, and you usually have no idea which they may be.”  
Anna looks to Karla as Candice reaches the far end of the path and fills her canteen.  
“So this is what you two have been up to weeks now? I thought you two were having some fling or something out here.”  
Claudia looks at Karla in total shock. Karla stammers out in shock, making a dozen nearby fruit explode.  
“Candice and me! Oh dear no!”  
As the roar of exploding fruit subsides, she continues in a softer tone.  
“Candice and I aren’t like that. I think she has a bit of a hang up over my apparent age, rather than my actual age. It’s only natural. Right now, I’m what they call a pedo-magnet, and I can’t get anyone to see me beyond my appearance.”  
Anna recognizes the painful anguish flowing from the young doctor. With the suffocating humidity and sweat, it’s difficult to distinguish the beads of sweat rolling down her face and the tears dribbling down her cheeks. Though she wants to pour her heart out in sympathy to her small doctor, Anna feels a glimmer of hope towards Candice, which seemed miniscule moments prior. Claudia wraps her arm around the meek girl, and hugs her tightly.  
“News flash, oh great elder one. Guys and girls have been guilty of that for as long as time has been recorded, and poetry has been written. They will continue to make those mistakes until the end of time, so don’t let it get you down.”  
At that moment, Candice emerges from the forest proudly.  
“Ta-Da! No thanks to you all making all that damn noise!”  
Bursting into a celebratory dance unscathed or tarnished, she tosses her full canteen at Karla who quickly swipes away the remnants of her pain. In a hoarse voice, she mutters to Candice.  
“Everyone is occasionally blessed with luck.”  
Undaunted, Candice sits down and sips at her water bottle she brought. With a defiant shrug, Claudia stands and strides towards the opening.  
“Heck! If the math nerd can do this, it should be a breeze for me.”

Strolling into the villa an hour past midnight, Claudia begins tearing off her sweats as Myka and Helena peer over the couch towards the door. The distinctive aroma from the fruit immediately curdles their noses. As Myka begins to protest, she notices Anna flash a desperate warning to stay quiet and she quickly rephrases her statement.  
“Um…is this going to be a reoccurring habit for you four?”  
The obvious frustration in Claudia’s words lowers the temperature further in the room.  
“Apparently! Our concentration camp commander here is saying I have to do this every night until I master the fine art of avoiding exploding fruit.”  
Candice speeds to her room and returns with a tin of soaps. Opening up Claudia’s hand, she places it squarely in her grasp as she speaks.  
“I have found these soaps and oils are best in removing the odor from your skin. Conventional soap doesn’t work as well. I suggest showering with the soap, then soaking in a bath with the oils for at least 45 minutes afterwards. Instructions are on the tin.”  
With a sarcastic grin, Claudia excuses herself, and Candice breathes a heavy sigh of relief. Candice proudly continues after Claudia slams her door closed.  
“I have officially graduated after not only completing the course once, but four times consecutively without so much as one fruit exploding.”  
Karla shakes her head and sits across from Helena.  
“I have no idea how she did it. It takes most people nine months to master this, and she does it in three. Seeing that you have done so well, you are officially the trainer for the exploding fruit path of death. The student has become the master, congratulations.”  
Anna goes to the kitchen and pours several glasses of wine and hands them out.  
“To our beloved team member.”  
After everyone drinks, Myka speaks.  
“Not to sour the mood, but what news do we have from command?”  
Karla finishes her glass before speaking.  
“Well, we have two people inbound. They have reestablished a communications link to Earth, so we have a limited data link. I don’t have their files yet, but they will arrive in a few weeks. I’m told one is an ex-Army corpsman, and the other was in the Air Force. I have no specifics on the Air Force girl, but the corpsman is highly decorated and will need some body work done, like Claudia had. The rumor mill told me that she was decorated for saving dozens of lives while she was waiting to be discharged. A terrorist or distraught soldier walked into the personnel office and started shooting people. She got out of her wheelchair, and subdued him with just her wits alone. After I heard that, I knew this is someone who can survive the warehouse.”  
Both Helena and Anna nod in agreement, engrossed in the story.  
Noting Karla’s words, Myka pries solemnly.  
“How much ‘work’ will she need?”  
Karla thinks deeply before responding.  
“Both legs from the hips own, her left hand and lower arm, and significant facial and cranial reconstruction. It’s about three to four weeks of work, plus physical therapy. It’s been over six months since the IED devastated her body. The longer the time, the more physical therapy will be needed.”  
Anna mumbles out a stray thought.  
“God, that’s someone who had the ‘Q’ section ripped out of their dictionary.”


	18. “Recovery”

Slipping through the underbrush, Myka finds a small clearing and silently guides the team to an overlook. From her earwig, the military assault team orders them to hold back as they “pacify” the area two hundred feet below their lookout. Taking out their binoculars, they spread out and observe quietly. As Anna scans the area below, she feels Candice nudge her for a look by trading a canteen for the binoculars in her hand. Rolling her eyes, she surrenders them and drinks quietly. Candice was the real reason the team was on this particular planet. Her analyses of the enemy behaviors were becoming more accurate the more she observed them, so command insisted she spent more time in the field. Down below, she noted the systematic search pattern the squads of aliens were following using what she could only describe as metal detectors. Candice activates the mike around her throat as she ponders the task at hand. 

“Whatever you do, make sure you don’t intentionally destroy any of those metal detector things they are using.”  
Helena joins Candice and whispers in her ear.  
“Ideas?”

Candice shrugs. In a concussive salvo, the aliens are cut down in a barrage of crossfire; and in less than two minutes, the field goes quiet.  
“If I knew or could guess, I wouldn’t have said anything. This is an old base of theirs?”

Helena nods.  
“This was one of the major strings of bases they had. This very spot was one our favorite lookouts back then.”

A sudden eruption of gunfire from inside of the nearby alien craft lasts for less than a minute before it goes completely quiet once again. Over the radio they get the ‘All-Clear’ and Myka leads them stealthily down the hill. Helena silently marvels how far the ragtag group of artifact hunters had come together and become a real gem to the war effort. While most of them lacked any previous combat experience, she couldn’t help to feel amazed at their improving levels of competence. Even the most inexperienced agent, Candice, had blossomed into a superb field agent.

Emerging from the forest, Myka cautiously brings them to the alien space craft as the soldiers disarm the dead and check them over for vital items or intelligence. Giddy with anticipation, Candice can barely contain herself waiting to get her hands on the alien tools. Putting on their customary purple gloves, they get the second all-clear and descend on the pile of gear the soldiers were building. Candice is the first to pick up and handle the device, and in less than a minute has it running, moving it across the ground as the aliens were. Much of the sensors were producing indecipherable gibberish, but she couldn’t shake the familiarity. Only when she approached Anna did she begin to understand the possible functions. Looking at her teammate, Helena shrugs, motions to come together, and whispers to stay close.

Taking Myka, Karla, and three soldiers, Helena moves the search into the small alien transport ship, very similar to the scout ship wreckage they found previously. As they disappear up the illuminated gangway, Anna begins scouring the perimeter, looking for any holes their four remaining soldiers could be missing. Satisfied momentarily, Anna returns her attention to her team mimicking the searching actions the aliens were performing earlier. Candice huddles with Claudia and they seem to reach a consensus before motioning for Anna to join them. With her silenced Israeli X95 assault rifle at the ready, she strolls over to see a pair of beaming smiles from the two geniuses. Claudia is practically hopping over their discovery.  
“It’s an alien AE detector!”

Motioning to keep her voice down, Candice continues for her.  
“She’s right, Anna. This is completely different in operation and design as ours, so I don’t think they stole the design or anything. It has some awesome functions I think I can incorporate into ours though. We’re lucky we found them. They are searching for artifacts; and with these detectors, they’ll be able to find them twice as fast. They even store the times, dates, and locations where they found artifacts. Would you believe they are networked together? After I get these back, I should be able to download all their data and workout where they’ve been searching.”

Blown away by the complexity of their find, Claudia is called into the ship to download the computer core before they destroy it. Rather than lose all the resources from the alien ship by destroying the entire ship, they were finding that they could destroy key systems onboard, which rendered it incapable of flight. Thanks to the ingenuity the humans brought to the war, the Famori were experiencing a new surge in victories against the Yamorians. They previously destroyed every single ship they acquired, fearing they would somehow retake them if they lost the area in a counter offensive. Over the years, it became obvious that they couldn’t guarantee that the ships couldn’t be stolen back, so demolition was common up until recently. 

The recovery of alien technology was increasing vital and the destruction of an entire ship was becoming too expensive of a habit. Furthermore, the Yamorians were experiencing a shortfall in ship production thanks to a loss of key mining facilities to Earth forces. The Earth had managed to deploy a dozen battleships which overtook the facilities. Worse, the Yamorians had lost a famous ship construction yard which produced their largest command ships. The Earth not only captured the facilities, but reprogrammed them and had Terran ship construction at full speed in less than a month. Claudia had heard that it was due to her translation program which allowed them to interface rapidly and to reprogram the alien computers with Famori operating systems in days instead of weeks. The Famori system, based mostly on stolen  
Yamorian designs, easily overwrote the existing operating system.

With thousands of humans entering the war each day, the ships had to be constructed to completely accommodate the crews. The simple fact that hundreds of thousands of people from across the world were secretly coming together in a singular purpose just blew Candice’s mind away. Anna mentioned that half the soldiers in their squad were Ukrainian like her, and she couldn’t believe that people were abandoning their national allegiances and committing themselves to an overriding planetary allegiance. The entire concept was alien to even her, like something straight out of a science fiction novel.

Ripped from her deep southern Texas roots and planted into the central Texas dirt of Austin’s University of Texas just after her fourteenth birthday, she never imagined she’d be bopping around the country going from university to university accomplishing her various stages of education. Each one promised a level of excellence above the other, which was baseless. Sitting with a PhD from MIT, she had felt her academic excellence was worthless without someone to share in her joy. As she cried herself to sleep night after night in her one bedroom apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts she finally had a life changing encounter in Starbucks. A young girl, a freshman she’d seen countless times on campus, accidentally left her phone on her seat. Overcome by the need to help the young student, obviously bewildered by the barrage of homework and class projects, she immediately swiped the phone up and sought her out at school. It took her less than an hour to find her, and they spent the rest of the day miraculously bonding. 

It was a week later which the student, Miranda, finally confided in her that she wasn’t a mere student and saw the effects of Candice’s hollow heart. Candice practically exploded in tears, having been exposed as a fake. It wasn’t just that she lacked a soul mate, but a purpose. Without some higher purpose or function, she couldn’t imagine continuing on. She couldn’t imagine why she was pouring her heart out to this stranger, three years her junior, but she felt a connection which filled a place in her soul. When she asked Candice if she’d be willing to give everything up to make a difference in universe, she practically screamed yes. Twenty-five hours later, she was waking up in the backseat of a limo with her teammates. Deep inside, she wished that she had woken up with Miranda beside her, but her current friends turned out to be quite acceptable as a consolation prize. 

Over the years of perpetually dealing with her gawky lack of physical development, it formed her attraction towards an intellectual partner versus raw physical attraction. A sharp mind and wit became her standard which few could attain. Even when they did, she only discovered some quirk which drove her away. Yet as she’s immersed within her close knit pool of friends, her creature comfort is only a buffer to the hollow emptiness of her heart. She considered asking Karla to be transferred to another team, in hopes of finding that little magic Myka and Helena shared. With an all-female team, she was finally considering her options to include Anna, Claudia or Karla in her list of potential partners. Lists and statistical probabilities filled her mind, mostly as a defensive measure to her loneliness. She was finally using her inherent nerdiness to improve her life, versus hindering it, and she was finally feeling good about being her.

At the top of her list was the medical genius Karla, but the centenarian trapped in the ten-year old body was still sparking a flood of emotions from her youth, none of which were positive. In time she might get past that, leaving her with the fake redhead Claudia. Extremely close to her age, the raw genius had serious pros over cons. She also had experience in same-sex love, which gave her serious positive prospects. Claudia was also dealing with her lover’s untimely death, so that was also a major disadvantage to overcome. Lastly, the fierce amazon warrior Anna had few pros, as she was neither an academic genius or projected the desire to commit to a permanent relationship. Or at least she thought that up until their time in the artifact river basin, as they now referred to their most recent artifact recovery mission. To this very day, she has no idea why she passionately risked her life to save the tough soldier girl. For that reason, Anna was somehow jockeying for a significant place on her list, despite Candice’s reluctance. 

As their shuttle lands besides the alien craft, Candice fights to dismiss the growing attraction towards her teammates. With her philandering father as a motivator, she refused to worm between Myka and Helena. Her mother was emotionally devastated not to mention how badly it affected Candice’s scholastic potential. Until the divorce, she was on the fast track to going to college by the age of 10. Afterwards, it took her years of therapy and coaching to get her tuned back into school, not to mention college. She now saw herself as a survivor more than anything; a survivor of an environment which few kids found strength or reassurance. The best part of the ordeal was Candice and her mother became infinitely closer and stronger. Candice insisted on her mother joining her through ought her college years in Austin and Cambridge, but her mother eventually found love in the arms of a rich CEO, and their tight bonds were stretched thin. She didn’t hate her, because she had work to comfort her as the lines kept stretching thinner and thinner. As she made a new family, and separated Candice from any ties to it, she seemed to have been forced to make concessions in order to have her new life. Moving to Europe, her emails and pictures eventually trickled to a single Christmas and birthday card. So her decision to leave the world behind was an easy decision to make.

Using the alien gear and their own AE detection equipment, they find a meager helmet buried five feet down which radiated intense AE waves. With little hopes of understanding the potential effects of most of the alien artifacts they found, the most they could do was bag it, label it, and move on. The intelligence community surmised they were testing the objects on willing or unwilling guinea pigs, so they had to tread lightly on the subject of determining their effects. 

With the last of the gear and intelligence from the scout ship stowed onboard, Candice strides inside and joins her team and protection squad. A mix of men and women, they preferred to stay distant from researchers, both physically and emotionally. Many researchers were lost as they lacked significant combat or survival skills, and the emotional drain couldn’t be ignored on the soldiers who watched them come and go. Though Karla’s team was different than most, the soldiers simply refused the emotional attachment or familiarity which could be lost in the blink of an eye. Most knew some researchers were more adept at the field work than others like Karla’s team, but the potential loss of life was too much to risk for most. With the demolition of key systems complete, the shuttle lifts away with hundreds of hours of study and research ahead of them stored in the hold.


	19. “Playing It Safe”

Chapter 19

The best idea from the research command was the creation of a test center closer to the villas where the staff was housed. It took months of constant complaints to finally push them to establish a new center ten minutes away versus the hour flight time each way. Though they still piled into a shuttle every morning and evening, the hour and half they saved equated to forty-five minutes more sleeping-in and forty-five minutes more time relaxing after work. Or at least that’s how it was supposed to work, because they wound up leaving for the labs half an hour earlier, and staying an extra half-hour to an hour after their previous end times.

Myka spent most her days helping Claudia test the alien detectors and fine tune theirs. Enduring the endless rub of being in love and having Helena at her arm’s reach every day at work, Myka couldn’t deny she loved every minute of it. Sneaking a peak up at the observation tower where Helena and Karla tediously interpreted the volumes of intelligence reports flowing into their office remotely, she could barely contain her elation when Helena sat down next to her. Myka was starting to dread artifact collection. The work itself was far safer than it was back on Earth, as the majority of the work equated to simple archeology and excavation operations. There were rarely any victims, the detectors Claudia crafted made the search a boring treasure hunt at best, and it was hardly a great mystery where they would show up next. The only frustrating portion of the job was in the race to recover them before the Yamorians. Twice in the past week, they raced to an old war site, only to discover it was riddled with fresh excavation holes. 

There was no mistaking that they were searching for artifacts. From the detectors to the bins of recovered artifacts in their holds, the aliens were on a massive treasure hunt to assemble a massive collection of artifacts. From what the team had recovered on their own, the majority were completely unclassified. With little hope of testing them, the all the teams simply bagged and tagged each find. Battles were suddenly getting closer to the world they called home, and the artifact collection suddenly was taking a lethal connotation. Because the enemy was attempting clandestine artifact recovery during the heat of battle, it forced Karla and Helena to attempt the same. Shuffling Helena, Myka, and Anna onto a special ops shuttle scheduled for the next front, she keeps her second squad tucked away at the facility locked in research and training. 

Claudia couldn’t help but be in awe how Candice could envision the reprogramming of the alien technology without the dozens of interface systems which translated the languages back and forth. In a singled-minded effort, she’d descend into the process and let her mind and body function as a machine devoid of the use of her other senses. The alien operating system had a significant lag time for most engineers translating it back and forth, but Candice never suffered from this time loss like her peers. Claudia, the self-defined extraordinaire of the computer world, could only sit back and monitor Candice’s capability to completely interface with the computer unlike anything she’d ever seen on this planet or back home. She enthralled in horror and awe she witnesses Candice’s face slacken as she succumbs to the power of the interface while her hands and arms operate per the requirements of the interface. Her usually brilliant emerald eyes lose their radiance and cloud over while she submits to the demands of interfacing with the two systems, making Claudia ache all over. 

With her stomach churning from the display, she slips away from Candice’s side and vents her abhorrence to the demands of the system to Karla. After half an hour of yelling and screaming, Claudia finally sits down as Karla forces her to listen to what she has to say.

“First, Candice does this by her own choice, not my demands! Next, she does in seven hours what takes six people to do in twelve. She gets it in a way that no one else does, not even you or I. Lastly, she is able to interface so well because she was linked to an artifact when she was a child. It rewrote the neural pathways in her brain allowing her to perfectly interface with computers to literally communicate with computers at a bizarre level. That artifact, a pocket protector given to her by Steve Wozniak, was destroyed by your warehouse people from the express orders of Mrs. Frederic ten years ago just after Candice came into contact with it. She wasn’t someone we randomly recruited off the street; she was earmarked to join the warehouse when she was ready. Instead of the warehouse, I was able to recruit her first, and we are very fortunate to have her.”

Still fuming Claudia moves to the observation window overlooking the lab. Gazing upon Candice absorbed in the reprogramming, she can’t believe how many lives were upended or warped by artifact exposure. With a strange pull to the gawky redhead, Claudia can’t fathom the whys or hows. With half the team on assignment, Karla shuts down the lab early, and takes her work back to the villa and let Claudia and Candice rest. With Claudia spending up to fours a night practicing her stealth exercises, Karla told them she felt it was only fair to just break early from the lab work. Candice’s performance appeared to be less than optimal with a huge segment of the night consumed by Claudia’s training. 

With repressed glee, Karla was overly pleased how her team was interacting. Though Myka and Helena were an established couple, she saw how Anna and Candice were warming up to each other, and now she saw a spark developing between Claudia and Candice. Considering how quickly it could get complicated, she decides to monitor it closely. She never considered her role expanding to relationship manager, yet she had to consider every aspect of her job, both defined and unknown. With her two recruits in route, she had to just wait and see what baggage they might bring. The latest report had them arriving in just a few days, and she wished she had Myka or Anna to welcome them. Alas, she was going to fall back on Claudia to greet the Air Force girl. She wanted Myka to be the mentor for the Army soldier, but she just had to put more responsibility onto the rest of the team. As her mind drifts, the communications panel comes to life with Helena filling the display. With a warm smile, Karla switches on the system and is surprised as the image of her old friend fades in and out clouded by the snow of interference. Helena is practically screaming over the rumble of impacts echoing inside the ship they are in. 

“We are at the coordinates, but so is a Yamorian interdiction fleet. We’re taking heavy damage and it doesn’t seem possible to go planet-side as we first planned.”  
Nodding Karla looks down to her keyboard before responding.

“Well, be safe and do not do anything which will put you in unnecessary danger.”  
Helena nods before responding. 

“Copy that! No unnecessary risks. H.G. out!”  
With a heavy sigh she waits until the screen goes black before finally rising from her chair and joining Candice at her station, reviewing her current work before leading them all back to the villa.

Switching off the communications panel, Helena nods to the pilot who throttles the engine to full as Helena straps herself back into her seat. Yelling over the din of the engines, Myka inquires about the conversation, barely audible from her seat.

“So what did she say?”  
As Helena finishes tightening the restraints, she replies.

“She said no unnecessary risks, meaning to continue as planned.”  
As Myka starts to ask how that equates to continuing as planned, Anna helps.

“Meaning, she knew our communications could be monitored so the reverse was true. I overheard them talking before we left. If she said not to take any risks, it would mean to go ahead with the mission. If she ordered her to go in, Karla would be belligerent and Helena would refuse to follow her orders. It works against an unsophisticated foe.”

As the shuttle roars forward, the pilot spins and rolls the ship chaotically. A gruesome metallic groan echoes through the compartment after a heavy impact throws the ship to the right. From the cockpit, the pilot yells to everyone.

“I hope you all brought an extra pair of underwear, because this landing is about to get very interesting.” 

Cringing, Anna tries relaxing and pushes her head back into the cushion as the ship accelerates to beyond its safe reentry limits. With warning claxons screeching from the cockpit, they endure a hellish flight through enemy lines noting the numerous secondary impacts ringing against the hull. After five minutes, the chaos of battle lessens and the ship throttles back enough to enter the atmosphere. Slowly, the roar of the engines is replaced by the thunder of the air shaking the damaged ship. Despite the gravity and acceleration dampeners, the small crew were still pushed and shoved about by the loss of numerous ship parts. As they expect the shuttle to fall apart, the ship levels out and the roar of the engines increases. The co-pilot unbuckles himself and screams to board the hover-raft. 

Anna jumps up and rushes into the pilot’s seat, while Myka and Helena buckle up in the passenger seats. From the cockpit, their Famori warehouse agent, Durki, quickly takes a seat besides Anna as the shuttle’s cargo ramp lowers. Glancing over her shoulder, she sees a pristine lake below them, with the placid tranquility torn apart by the shuttle soaring mere feet above the water. As the co-pilot checks the cargo and gear is sufficiently secured, the roar of the air consumes the bay. With a signal, the locks release and the hover-raft slides out the rear of the shuttle backwards and the shuttle eases over it to conceal its launch. As the shore approaches Anna brings it to a safe stop onto the rocky beach and the shuttle soars over the tree line. Driving it into the forest, Anna stops under the cover of the forest canopy and waits for the all clear before continuing to the mountain range 150 miles to the north.


	20. “The Newbies”

Chapter 20

Karla, Candice and Claudia stand as the last shuttle from the Famori Cruiser, Fleeting Glimpse, lands to unload its cargo. Patiently as the forklifts unload the shuttles, a woman in green camouflage pushes another young woman in a wheel chair off the shuttle between movements. Led by a Famori in drab olive coveralls, it effortlessly carries two massive green duffle bags nearly five feet long under each arm. Walking past Karla to their private shuttle, it sets the bags down in the cargo bay and heads into the cockpit. With the clamor and roar of activity along the flight line, Karla leads them into the shuttle after a quick exchange of handshakes.  
After a short delay, the shuttle jerks clear of the pad, and effortlessly glides to the hospital district a few minutes away. Setting it down on an empty parking spot, the pilot exchanges a few words with Karla before exiting. As Claudia turns to ask, Karla stops her.

“She said the kitchen is serving lasagna tonight, and she didn’t want to miss out. They are blown away by the use of the ‘poisonous’ fruit: tomato. It’s the one plant that they made an exception when it came to restricting the import of alien fruits and vegetables. On this world it never evolved into an edible plant, and they go nuts for it. It’s become a plant which is grown in every household’s private garden. I’ve lived with them for so long, and I still don’t get it.”

Claudia shrugs while Candice interjects.  
“They made approximately eight exceptions over the past 100 years, and the most notable besides tomatoes was that of the cocoa bean. They are speechless how we even developed and refined it to get chocolate. Godiva Chocolate is sold across the planet, as is Hershey’s syrup. They insist it’s the greatest contribution to the war effort we’ve ever made to date.”

Laughing Karla explains the true secret of the joke to their two new recruits.  
“You see, the enemy is so allergic to the substance and it is used as a chemical weapon…they ‘weaponized’ chocolate powder and syrup. When we do a surprise attack on their encampments, we literally can say that victory smells sweet. The enemy’s metabolism so different than anything we’ve ever imagined.”

Candice matter-of-factly continues.  
“You think that’s weird, you should watch an interrogation session with them. They’ll sit in front of the victim munching on a chocolate bar, relishing the horror the poor victim has. It’s simply surreal.”

With slurred speech the woman in the wheelchair, Morgan Powers, asks politely about the work. With an understanding nod Karla responds.  
“Well, there’s enough time for that later, but let’s just say that we are an archeological recovery operation which is regularly thrown into dangerous environments and situations. Up until now, we needed experienced agents who could think outside of the box because these items we recover are never ordinary; they vary, and are all dangerous in their own unique way. There is plenty of time to brief you later, and lots of mission files for you read in recovery, but remember this is beyond top secret. 99.9999% of the top military NEVER knew of what we did back on Earth, and even fewer knew we even existed. Hell, I think the last president who knew about us was Roosevelt…Theodore Roosevelt. He actually instituted the recruitment program to get the best agents from the government into the warehouse. Hoover almost found out about us, but our people threw a bone in the opposite direction, and he made congress a living hell under his administration. And If I’m not mistaken, Roosevelt was the only president to ever recover an artifact and visit the last warehouse. Right now, we need to infuse a mix of agents into our ranks who have combat experience and intelligence analyzing capabilities. I have civilians who are learning how to become seasoned soldiers. Eventually they’ll be able to survive in the field on their own, but I need a specific range of military skills to add to the team’s base skills. You’ll have to learn that my team’s civilian backgrounds are as valuable as what you are bringing to the table. This war is changing what and how we do things here, and they are adapting very fast, but I need quick thinking and adaptable individuals who will be thrust into war zones. Of my agents, Anastasia Krylenko was a seasoned Russian soldier who got into the artifact recovery department in her home country. Additionally, Helena Wells was here during the first war, and has a deep insight into the old battle sites and war zones. Aside from her, none of my agents are really familiar with the location and have no military experience to protect them in the field. They are learning, but I need you two now. Morgan, let’s get you into surgery; they are waiting for us. TSgt Reynolds, go back with Candice and Claudia to the villa and get settled in. Candice will get you started on the stealth training course tonight. As soon as you get qualified on that, we can advance you to the more technical physical training courses.”

Claudia sneers mischievously and whispers to the young sergeant under her breath.  
“I doubt the army prepared you for this kind of training. You’re gonna earn your pay check tonight.”  
She looks at Claudia; uncertain exactly what she means, but knew that too many things would be brand new to her. With determination, she settles into her seat and relaxes as the shuttle flies an hour to the villa.

Karla stands in the observation room, as Morgan is undressed and sedated for the lengthy operation which lies ahead. Fitted with intravenous ports to supply the body with life preserving fluids and the regenerative drugs, Morgan slips into unconsciousness and blindly accepts that the three day ordeal is worth the recovery of her lost limbs. After a few minutes, her stability is verified before starting the horrific regeneration process. Using a cold non-cauterizing laser, the layers of useless flesh and bone are trimmed off and allowed to bleed once again. Almost immediately, the regenerative bags attach to the freshly cut flesh, stopping the bleeding and react to the regenerative fluids pumping through her veins. Karla hated watching this initial phase, as she saw the destruction of the old body mass as opening up old wounds. Though in her head she knew it was the only way to encourage the body to initiate the healing process, she still didn’t like it. Moving her attention to the facial reconstruction, the surgeons use a similar abrasive laser and maul the damaged and scarred areas of her body and face. Placing regenerative patches immediately onto the fresh wounds, before the night is over, the corporal is covered with gelatinous blobs over most of her body. 

Dropped off down the street from villas, the three agents trudge inside and get the sergeant into the far western room. As Claudia begins to address the sergeant by her last name once again, she’s stopped and corrected.  
“Alice. You can just call me Alice. I think my military rank is a moot point now. So, not many of you have military experience? Strange.”  
Alice throws her duffle bag into a chair and Claudia stares at the chair which was once in her room. Though her clothes had stopped magically folding themselves on her chair at night, she couldn’t handle having the chair in her room just in case, and moved it into this one long ago. Alice raises an eyebrow at Claudia, and shakes her head at the redhead. Clearing her voice, she snaps Claudia out of her delirium.  
“So Karla mentioned something about training tonight?”

Claudia shakes her head and chuckles.  
“Yah. I suggest just a sports bra and jogging shorts. We don’t have many biting insects which have a taste for human blood here, so it’s practically a paradise here at night. It has something to do about the sugars in our blood actually act as a deterrent, repellant, or something. With that said, lately the temperatures have been in the low eighties at night with about one hundred percent humidity. It doesn’t take much to break a sweat around here, so we stay indoors as much as possible. Candice has aced the test, so you and I are on the short list for training. I’ll show you the test and Candice will oversee it. By this time next week, you’ll loath it. So what’s your story? How did you get recruited?”

Alice smirks and chuckles as she begins unpacking her green duffle bag.  
“I was about to get out after nine years in the Air Force. I was on the fast track but inside of me was dead after my…girlfriend was murdered in Iraq. She was in the Marine Corps. The interpreter was a double agent and was operating for the other side. He shot her in the head from behind. I was visiting an old flame back in my home town, when this crazy guy with an electric gun was chasing down a junkie with flaming hair. And when I say flaming hair, I mean the guy’s hair was fire, not on fire. When he smacked the pudgy guy unconscious, I took it upon myself to continue pursuit except I swiped a fire extinguisher. When I surprised the guy with the foam spray in the face, which didn’t have much effect except pissing him off, I back-handed him with the cylinder which did the trick. Your pudgy friend showed up a minute later as I was checking the guy over for an ID, winded.”

Claudia laughs.  
“Good ole Artie, showing up after all the action is over.” 

Alice continues.  
“Then as I was waiting for the rest of your people to show up to make the evidence disappear, this woman shows up and tells me to keep quiet about it, and hands me a card to call in the morning. She said if I needed a career change, to give them a call. And as they say, two months later, the rest is history.”  
Claudia laughs off the story and excuses herself.  
“Get a nap in, and we’ll get started after night fall. We usually start around 10:00 but seeing that it’s just us, we can get started early and get you used to the path. Um…Candice left you a ‘welcome’ gift. The tin has soaps and perfume oils and salts which remove the smell from the exploding fruit. Your arms and legs will be sore afterwards, so long baths and showers are a must around here.”  
Nodding, Alice says good night, and finishes her unpacking. After checking out the tin, she undresses and slips under the covers, with her head spinning from the two week voyage across space.


	21. “The Mine”

Crawling through the thicket of brush and weeds surrounding the west side of Mount Gorgon, Myka was in awe of the magnitude of the great mountain. Towering above Mount Everest by over fifteen thousand feet, this lonely peak had two sister peaks which only breached 6800 feet each from the base ten miles away. Myka compared them to two inadequate suitors, too ashamed of their inadequacy to stand alongside the great mountain. Though the gentle slopes surrounding the mountains were substantial in their own rite, the gargantuan mountain had a prestigious nature which no hill or peak could be compared adequately. The tip of the mountain was typically obscured by even the highest of clouds, and she was told it was said to be a blessing to see the entire mountain in its full majesty. Today was one of those fortunate days.

Using their cameras and binoculars, the team scopes out the massive mining operation underway at the base of the mountain, led by a small contingent of enemy troops. The valley, dropping nearly nine hundred from the surrounding wooded plain, was believed to be due to the weight of the impressive mountain pulling the surrounding area down. Several great rivers were born from this depression, emptying to the west and south. These canyons were responsible for bringing severe flooding after the winter; and during that time, the current mining operation would be under 30 feet of water. At the highest point before entering the valley surrounding the peak, Myka could clearly discern the sophisticated operation below. 

Their guide, Durki, was a Famoran who preferred the shortened version of his name over the consequences of the human tongue slaughtering his true name. With a whisper, he points out the key items that grab his attention.

“The deep boring machines are gone already. All that’s left are the small portable units. Whatever they are after is small and could be damaged by the heavy gear.”

Helena nods.  
“I’m reading that it is at a 39 degree down angle, and they vaporized a 20 foot diameter hole into the heart of the mountain. They aren’t mining for resources. They are burning a second shaft off from the main and it seems like they are making a long spiral down.”

Out of curiosity, Myka reaches down and flips on her relic detector. In terror, she smashes the off button when the detector squawks loudly and goes off-scale high. Anna flashes her an annoyed glare. Stealthily abandoning their position, they blend back into the forest and move a better vantage point 3 miles away. 

 

Myka Raises her binoculars out from the outer row of boulders and is rewarded with a view of the enemy landing zone. In a whisper she counts out the number of troops and vehicles boarding a landing ship, while Helena dictates them into her notepad. After an hour, the ship shakes the valley floor as it ascends effortlessly into the sky. After another minute, the ship is but a speck in the darkening sunset skies. Helena’s attention spins to her right as Durki and Anna emerge from the forest. Sitting down in a depression, Durki opens his canteen and retrieves a ready-meal from his pack while Anna uploads the data from her scanners to a rugged laptop. Durki is the first to speak.  
“Well, they may have taken most of the troops and equipment, but they are still drilling. I counted a dozen at most. The commander is receiving a considerable amount of flak for their lack of success, and is being threatened with serious repercussions should he fail.”

Myka shakes her head.  
“I still can’t fathom how you can get so close without being detected.”

His hissing snicker, makes Anna smile broadly as she types in the download commands.  
“Give it up Myka. He has what you Americans call…Mad Skills? Yes, mad skills. It’s crazy watching him work. If any human tried to do what he does, we wouldn’t last ten seconds. It’s a natural ability to blend into their background or whatever he crosses, though I have to say it’s not very effective against manufactured backgrounds or materials. I saw you 4 times.”

Durki only shrugs while he feeds his face.  
“A tactical risk. Yes?”

Helena chuckles.  
“You’ve been hanging out with humans too much.” 

With a huge grin, he bobs his head up and down and continues to chow down.  
“As long as you humans keep developing these fantastic recipes, you have my devout support.”

Anna leans over and cringes.  
“Eggplant parmesan? Really?”

Myka bites her lip from letting out a loud snort of laughter.  
“Anna, that’s his version of bacon-wrapped ribs. Just let it go. Any idea exactly what they are mining?”

He shakes his head no.  
“It said ‘The Rock’ and that’s all. It was very specific.”

Helena breaks out her dinner, and pours a small amount of water into the bag to activate the heating element.  
“I have to say that I’m baffled as to what they are looking for.”

Myka cringes at her choice of meals, and shrugs before Durki continues.  
“It would help if we knew why they wanted this specific rock. Anyone know of any artifacts that are natural phenomena?” 

A blanket of silence envelopes the team as they eat their instant meals, absorbed in deep thought. As everyone sits quietly, Anna scrounges through her bag and dons a visor that’s tied to her laptop. Accessing the artifact encyclopedia, she begins searching for anything which could fit their mysterious object. To Anna’s surprise, there are numerous artifacts classified as “naturally forming.” Anna speaks to her team as she searches the archives.  
“The problem is that in the past few decades, they’ve discovered the direct correlation to artifact creation and people, or at least have gone on the record about it. They believe 99% of the artifacts listed as ‘natural’ are incorrectly identified.”

Helena notices Anna’s diminishing accent and grins momentarily.  
“I’ve never heard of any ‘natural’ artifacts which had any malign or insidious qualities. If they did, we’d have noticed them before.”

Anna chimes in immediately.  
“Isn’t that the only reason we gather artifacts? They are essentially dangerous and we collect and store them. So what if this type of artifact is not dangerous in itself. It is benign and not a threat in itself.”

From his side of the circle, Durki interjects.  
“Well aren’t the Yammorians experimenting with combining artifacts? Perhaps they are merging it with a missile to make it more explosive and lethal?”

Helena shakes her head.  
“It would be a one-shot weapon, something which after its use is lost.”

Anna nods.  
“Dah. If it were a reloadable weapon though, they could continue using it until they run out of ammunition…or energy. Perhaps this is a component in an energy weapon…something brand new.”

Myka agrees.  
“Yah, but it would be only one ship, right? It would have to be one powerful weapon in order to make a difference. They aren’t building the Death Star right?” 

The Star Wars reference is lost on her team mates and she can only shake her head.  
“The one time I use a movie reference, Pete isn’t around to hear it. Figures. The Death Star was an enormous mobile battle station the size of a moon. It was known for having a powerful laser which could destroy planets with one shot.”

Durki stops feeding his face in terror.  
“Please tell me this is another work of fiction, not historical.”

Helena shrugs.  
“News to me. I didn’t have time to catch many movies while I was on Earth. I’ve never heard of it before, neither on Earth or here.”

Anna raises her hands defensively.  
“I was a soldier first, childhood distant second.”  
Myka grumbles.  
“If only Pete was here, he could fill in the blanks. I guess it comes back to what could they be mining for which could be utilized into a science fiction weapon. A focusing crystal for some kind for a laser gun?”

Helena leans over and whispers to her friends.  
“Don’t forget it’s an artifact as well.”

As they go back and forth, Durki finally states the obvious.  
“We must keep them from having this thing…whatever it is.”


	22. “Scientific Methods”

Tossing her canteen into the pile, Alice collapses next to Claudia frustrated and pouring out rivers of sweat. Alice sips at her water bottle and finally seethes out breaking the silence.  
“I don’t know which is worse: the 10K “Fun Runs” we used to do in our unit or this humiliating sloth walk.”  
Claudia shakes her head.  
“Never combined the words ‘fun’ and ‘run’ in the same sentence before, so I wouldn’t know. Karla makes this look easy and never once goes to her hands and knees, and Candice does it like it’s supposed to, and that’s just as humiliating. I’m down to five fruit a run, which isn’t bad. You’re at eight, so that’s really good for a first timer. There are six routes we go, and the fruit take about three days to replace the ones that explode.”  
Taken back, Alice laughs.  
“You don’t run, and you have that physique? What do you all eat here?”  
Chuckling, Claudia slaps at her abdomen.  
“This body is maintained through arduous hikes in god-forsaken jungles, long deployments in the field, and all-nighters of research with only coffee to subsist on. Oh yah, not to mention our rigorous martial arts training, and this now infamous sloth-walk of ours. Myka and Anna are your athletes here. Candice and I are the nerds of the team.”  
Sitting up, Alice playfully pries further.  
“So what does that make Karla and Helena?”  
Thinking hard, Claudia grins.  
“Well, Karla is our Lethal Lolita, and Helena is our God-Mother. She really looks over us like we were here kids or something. She and Myka are a couple and share the same room; but other than that, no one else has coupled up yet. So with those descriptions, where does that place you?”  
Alice takes another sip before responding.  
“I guess I would describe myself as that troubled loner coping with the ghosts of her past.”  
Nodding, Claudia drinks and retorts.  
“Well, loners don’t last long here. Eventually you begin to crack and we get under your skin…in the good way. Anna used to be that very person, but even she is warming her heart up to relationships. Artifacts have that way of exposing your deepest and darkest of secret emotions and brining them to the surface; and never in the nice and pleasant of ways.”  
Alice can only nod.  
“There’s that word again: Artifact. You’re going to have to get me spun up on these things.”  
Thinking hard, Claudia finally nods as she stands.  
“I’ll run that by Karla first, but I think I have something in mind. Let’s knock out one more pass at the Sloth-Walk before calling it a night.” 

 

Pain filled Myka’s body as she’s tossed against the rock floor and collides with the unconscious bodies of her team. In a mass of bodies, she tries to clear her head as she crawls around blindly in the dark clad in just her underwear. In the pitch blackness, she feels the warm flesh of her team mates, and the assurance that they are at least still alive. It takes only a few minutes of poking and prodding to verify Helena and Durki were lying beside her. Abruptly, she shifts to her side and pain erupts from her belly, doubling her over atop Helena. Crying, she clutches at her lower abdomen as the memories of the past 16 hours of torture suddenly return like the tides and she seeks the comfort of her lover underneath her. As she sobs, she imagines the horrors Anna must be enduring, and the lonely knowledge that any rescue is both unlikely and impossible. 

 

Alice was still finding it difficult to simply wake up whenever she felt like it, and begin her day whenever she felt like it. Spending the first hour of her day running around the compound, she ends her routine with a rigorous amount of calisthenics and finally joins the team at the table. With her nose buried in her work at the dinner table, Claudia waves at Alice as she passes. By the time she has showered and dressed, she is surprised to find Candice and Karla slumped around the table silently worshiping their cups of coffee. After pouring her a tall cup, she joins the duo and scans the room for the rest of her new team. As her head ducks around, Karla captures her attention before she can inquire.  
“Sergeant Powers is doing well. The regenerative process was a success and she should be regaining consciousness by tomorrow. As soon as she is fit to leave, we’ll get her settled in here. I’m hoping that the rest of our team will be back soon, they are overdue. It’s not unusual for a team to go overdue; it’s difficult to keep a time schedule in the field. It’s a guideline, not a rule. So Alice…I heard your first training session went well.”  
Alice shakes her head remembering the previous night’s ordeal.  
“You have a bizarre training program. So what exactly is it supposed to teach?”  
Karla snickers in her usual childish tone.  
“It teaches stealth and fine motor movements; something which the majority of my team lack. Knock it out as fast as possible, and you can move on to the hardcore field training, like weapons and artifact recovery. Oh! I’m approving Claudia’s training plan for you. She wants you to experience the full power of the artifact and she’ll handle it. I don’t need to oversee it. Most are not benign but the ones she chose will give you a small taste of what they can do. She’ll record it for you to review afterwards so you can learn from the experience. Recognizing you’re under the effects of an artifact is essential in this job. Some are impossible to discern while others more than not. You never know until it’s too late, usually.”  
Alice shakes her head.  
“Just when I thought I’d seen it all.”

 

Anna’s eyes flutter open and immediate horror overcomes her. Naked and fully exposed in the examination chair, she desperately pulls at the restraints to free herself. Struggling uselessly, they refuse to give and she sees a display with a morbid list laid out. Reading it, she can’t imagine why it’s written in English, and she doesn’t comprehend its purpose. Numbered, it starts with stuff like: Motor Control, eyelids, install glasses, appendage unguis, mammary papilla, dermis covering clitoris...the last item turns her blood cold. A six foot tall Yamorian steps out from behind her and coldly begins speaking to her in English.  
“Excellent, you’re awake. Now, don’t be afraid, I’m here to do a scientific evaluation of your pain tolerances and how it varies from individual to individual. Your two female companions have been subjected to various other techniques and you were selected for this particular program due to your previous experience in combat. Now, I’m going to install various apparatus to preserve your life; but for now, I want to allow you to speak as you wish so I can judge your tolerances. My associates typically can’t stand your howling during the evaluation process, but I have developed a unique understanding of it, and value your various screams and cries all through the evaluation. You see, your input is important to me, so that’s why I want you to be fully aware of what I’m doing, so I’m removing your eyelids and installing a set of goggles to keep them moistened. I don’t want you to miss a single minute, so if you go unconscious for any reason, I’ll wake you up before continuing any further. On the bright side, I will reinstall all the items I remove, so you’ll be as good as new when I’m done. No permanent damage, I promise.”  
He waits for Anna to speak, then continues when it’s obvious she’ll say nothing. Leaning over, he brings a small dish of white goo in front of her. Thinking nothing of it, she suddenly notices the goo is composed of small white particles undulating and moving.  
“These are Magas, tiny parasitic worms which feed exclusively on nerve tissue. Your dermal covering is sufficient to prevent them from attacking your nerve tissues, and that’s why I have to remove it to give them access to your nerve endings.”  
With horrific pleasure, he continues.  
“They crunch and chew at the nerve endings, not take bites and swallow, but chew and chew until it is a digestible mush of weak strands. Each are no more than a hundredth of the width of one of your hairs, but their mouths are even smaller, and they can barely fit the nerve strands in their mouths so they have to chew excessively to break it up and digest them. The resulting pain is almost unimaginable…almost. Rest assured once I’m done, your body will be repaired and put back together so that we can try it again later to duplicate your results. Remember: the only good science is when the results are predictable and repeatable. Let’s begin, shall we?”  
On a computer pad, he ticks various options to keep like autonomic breathing, bowel control, cardiac rate, and pain reception while deselecting motor control and body reflexes. As soon as he hits ‘Apply’ Anna instantly can no longer control her limbs or move her head. Tears roll down her cheeks as he horrifically takes a scalpel and removes her eyelids and places them into a labeled dish. Submerging them in a preserving fluid, he uses a tool to stop the bleeding and he attaches a lens over each eye. Returning her ability to see clearly, the horrific study begins and her screams fill the room. Sound proof, no one outside the room is aware of her ordeal or cares. 

In a crumpled mass, Anna is tossed into an adjacent cell to Myka and the cold steel door is latched and sealed. No more than animal cages, the locks lack any visual ports for a key and Myka can’t discern how they are opened in the first place. Transferred to these cages only hours prior, she had worried for Anna but didn’t see any scars or bruises unlike her and Helena. Calling out to her, she can’t understand why Anna is catatonic and realizes her torture must have been different than hers. As she reaches through the bars and tries to evaluate her condition, a commotion near the entrance of the mine grabs her attention and she sees the cheering Yamorians exit toting a small travel crate. Adding up the signs, she feels her heart sink as they begin packing up their equipment and stowing gear.  
After an hour, they begin pointing towards the cages and direct a lift to pick them up and load them into their ship. As it rumbles towards them, a sudden thunder rolls through the ground making even the Yamorians stop in their tracks. An eerie silence descends on the camp, until suddenly another ominous growl shakes the ground. A pair of aliens run into the ship and exit in time to see a 12 foot tall fiery behemoth exit the cave dragging a pair of long ropes or chains of fire. Weapon fire erupts, but seems to have little effect on the beast. Clad in what Myka can only describe as plate mail, the near molten giant swings one of its long ropes into the air and cracks it like a bullwhip against the Yamorian battle armor. The armor explodes when struck, leaving a massive hole in its wake, killing the pilot almost instantly despite the ultra-sophisticated armor.  
Engaging each contingent of troops, the beast easily slaughters them despite the weapons and gear. The ship suddenly comes to life in a desperate bid to escape, only to have the beast leap atop it and tear a large hole in the top. Jumping inside the ship as it lifts off, the ship comes crashing down a hundred feet later. Belching out plumes fire and smoke, it suddenly goes quiet as flames quickly turn it into a mass of boiling metal and flames. Striding out of the rear of the ship, the beast kicks open the rear hatch and calmly leaves the inferno toting a glowing rock in his hand. As he approaches the cages where Anna, Helena, and Durki lie unconscious, he miraculously begins to shrink from the giant to a six foot tall warrior in identical armor as he had before. Looking the cages up and down, she seizes the lock on Helena’s cage and the metal liquefies. Tearing the door open, he repeats the process on each door, opening Myka’s last. It’s a surreal moment, as she can hear his voice inside her head as he speaks.  
“Protector. The heart of the mountain is no longer safe with me. Take it to your world and keep it safe.”  
He lays the glowing gem at her feet and bows. Without any further words, he turns and descends back into mountain cave. Myka finds the crates containing their confiscated gear, and redresses everyone. Wrapping the gem in a towel, she tucks it into her backpack. Half an hour later, a rescue ship arrives and secures the scene. Refusing to speak, they sit solemnly in silence for the entire trip back.

 

Karla goes out to patio away from her team and activates the Visual-Com channel to the High command. It takes a minute, and suddenly General Danvers appears sitting behind her desk. Sipping at what looks like coffee, she realizes they are 8 hours off in time zones. After exchanging very generic pleasantries, Karla begins.  
“I’m taking my team offline until further notice.”  
As the General suddenly gets red in the face, Karla jumps and screams at her.  
“They FUCKING tortured Anna to death twice! They used techniques that are beyond barbaric, even in human terms! I’m not even going into what they did to Myka for 16 hours straight! If we were on Earth, I’d permanently retire Anna and Myka, but we don’t have that luxury here! If you ever want to see them in the field again, you’ll get me the best post-traumatic stress counselor in the world, and maybe in a few years she might be able to be activated close to her previous capacity!”  
Shaking her head, she tries to calm the meek doctor.  
“Look there’s no way it’s that bad…you have to be exaggerating!”  
Fuming, Karla stuffs her face into the small camera and seethes her response so that no one inside can hear her.  
“Fucking listen to me! My team is broke! We can’t effectively operate until they are right in their heads. They’ll never be ‘right’ so get me the fucking best psychologist you can conjure up, no holds barred! GOT IT?”  
Slamming the laptop closed, she sits crying on the porch until dinner, and composes herself long enough to sit with them as a family.


	23. “Team Play”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After reading, please feel free to take a new relationship Poll at Easy polls: http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=54836722e4b08e1f99e921d8

Wheeling Sergeant Morgan Powers into the villa, Claudia smiles meekly at Myka who lies quietly in Helena’s arms on the couch. Mustering enough strength to return the smile, she encourages Helena to let her up, and they stand to greet their newest member. Helena, sporting bruises over most her body, had her most critical injuries healed by the enemy before returning them to her cage. Phantom scars, invisible to the naked eye, seemed just out of sight and plagued her subconscious mind. The electrical probes, attached to countless horrible and unmentionable points on her body, were systematically activated; and the resulting pain was gaged for effectiveness by power settings. Worse, to add injury to insult, they spent hours beating her with a club to gage her diminished reaction speeds from the electrical torture.  
Myka finds the inner strength to pull herself out of her morbid shell and act sociably friendly. Extending her hand, she greets the Sergeant despite her urge to return to Helena’s arms.  
“Hi. I’m Myka and this is Helena.”  
Myka’s pain and apprehension to engage socially screams to Morgan who is too familiar with the symptoms. With her face bandaged to conceal the regenerating tissue, Morgan feels the extra weight drawing her head downwards despite her renewed strength. The regenerative process made feel her like she was finally alive after so many months of brokenness. Even with the wheelchair and bandages, she could feel life surging through her veins. When she awoke, the nurses told her toes were dancing, and she hadn’t stopped moving them since. Though she wore long gauntlet gloves to protect her arms from the brilliant sun, the sweltering heat insisted she wore shorts.  
Claudia, pushing the wheelchair, points towards the rooms.  
“And of course we have Candice, Alice and Anna. Candice and Alice are in their rooms napping for tonight, and Anna…well she’s just in her room.”  
Nodding, Morgan reads the atmosphere accurately.  
“When will the after action report be ready for me to review from this last mission? It looks like it will be an interesting read.”  
Karla enters behind Claudia and closes the door. She hides her surprise seeing Morgan fully utilizing her regenerated arm as if nothing ever happened to it.  
“Soon I hope. Myka is still writing it up, but she already has a name for the artifact. What did you call it?”  
Letting Helena wrap her arms around her like a shawl, she nods as she replies.  
“An Arkenstone, and I think I’ll call our savior a Balrog after Tolkien’s work as well. The stone shines with this incredible inner light. If the stone was polished out to its true brilliance, there’s no telling what it would have been used for.”  
Morgan shakes her head trying to clear the fog.  
“All this is way beyond what I’d thought I’d be seeing. I’m the type which gets asked if I ate a good book lately rather than read one.”  
Her joke gets a sincere snicker from Myka, who hadn’t expressed any emotion besides dolor.  
Helena chimes in as Claudia pushes Morgan towards her room.  
“I may not be entirely with you on that, but I am amazed on the amount of research we do here. For every hour we spend in the field, we spend four to six more with our noses buried in books. I’ve always been a prolific reader, so the quantity of time we spend in books is up to my par.”  
Myka feels the bonds of her ordeal slacken enough for her to continue.  
“It’s one of the hardest aspects of the job to overcome. For doers over thinkers, it’s a frustrating element which has to be conquered. Pete spent hours working out or his general hijinks to combat his frustration. It’s also how his mind worked. If he wasn’t doing something with his hands, his mind wouldn’t process the volume of data we absorb.”  
Laughing Claudia immediately interjects.  
“What our astute geniuses are trying to say is that you’ll find your way, no matter how strange or unusual it is. While Helena and Myka work it by talking or whatever they are doing in their bedroom, Candice submerges herself in statistics and I find inspiration in my music.”  
Morgan lets Claudia push her towards her room as she continues.  
“Well, my weakness is at the range. I can spend hours squeezing off boxes of rounds. It gives me an inner peace to spend my time there; it always has. While I was at Walter Reed, I thought I was going to go nuts. No range time, no exercise, no weapon handling, just rest and physical therapy.”  
Karla follows her into her room.  
“Well, you’re getting more physical therapy, but I can arrange some range time along with mandatory artifact training. Claudia is developing an artifact training program to get you used to dealing with artifacts in the field. Everyone here has had some previous experience with artifacts, even Alice. You’re the only one who has no idea what we’re talking about, but you will before the week is out. We’re having several shipped here to teach you how to recognize and deal with exposure. Some are very nasty, while others can be quite benign; you just never know until it’s too late. So we’re going to expose you, and record it for you to review. This way it might help you recognize if and or when you’re under the influence.”  
From behind them a meek Russian voice rings out, making everyone turn is surprise and shock.  
“And don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize it. I had no idea I was under attack when I nearly drowned a few weeks ago. It overwhelmed my psyche and I couldn’t fathom an artifact was attacking me.”  
Wearing dark rings under her bloodshot eyes, her shaky disposition was impossible to disguise. Karla immediately moves to Anna’s side and gingerly comes inside her personal zone. Anna visibly cringes and resists the impulse to run away. She carefully gauges Anna’s reluctance to her proximity, and speaks in her soft childishly calming voice.  
“Do you want any sleeping pills? I can get you a prescription?”  
Grudgingly Anna shakes her head.  
“Sleep only makes it worse.”  
Nodding, Karla walks with Anna to the kitchen to make tea while Claudia gets Morgan settled in. As Claudia helps her get unpacked, Morgan whispers to her.  
“Is the enemy that cruel to women?”  
Shaking her head no, Claudia replies coldly.  
“Only 10 to 12 percent of our forces are female, so they’ve already ran all their experiments with the men. There haven’t been that many women for them to test on, so they take advantage of every opportunity they get to run ‘tests’ on us. The men they’ve tortured have suffered just as horribly. Most commit suicide after a short time, or just simply snap. Command isn’t talking about it officially, but Karla isn’t playing ball. This is why she’s handling this differently than the military has to date.”  
Biting the inside of her lip, Morgan nods.  
“So Karla is really like over a hundred years old huh?”  
Grinning, Claudia rattles her head up and down.  
“Yup. A true centenarian. I can’t remember how old she is, over a hundred and twenty, but technically Helena is around the same age. Unlike Karla she was put into a kind suspended animation, while Karla was offered a kind of eternal youth. As with so many things we do here, it’s complicated. Get used to that phrase; I hear or use it at least twice a week.”  
Chuckling, Morgan wheels herself around the room putting away clothes with Claudia. Spinning around, she slides up to Claudia before she can leave the room. Adjusting her short mop of ash-brown hair, longer than she’s used to, she grins as she prepares to speak.  
“So, I really only have one question left. Is it me, or do all of you play on the same team here? My gay-dar is usually pretty good about this.”  
With a long grin, Claudia goes around Morgan and stops at the door. Over her shoulder, she throws back at her.  
“You should ask Karla about removing the diaper you’re wearing. She’s really good with her hands.” 

 

Emerging from the undergrowth, Alice, covered from head to toe in florescent blue goo, throws her canteen next to her backpack and lies down on the grass. With heavy frustration intertwined, she seethes out towards Candice.  
“And you did this in how many weeks?”  
Shaking her head in disbelief, Morgan sits dumbfounded in her wheelchair by the complexity of the task.  
“This is freak ‘in nuts. This is like Delta Force level training; something you’d see in a movie as Ninja training.”  
Candice shrugs.  
“It took me less than eleven weeks. A new record for someone without any prior stealth training or experience.”  
Claudia shakes her head and splashes her for mentioning her super quick mastery.  
“Hey, I’m only at four fruit, and I’ve been at it for months now. I usually hit them as I’m leaving.”  
Candice leans over and whispers to her.  
“That’s because you get all anxious to get done, that you get sloppy at the very end. Slow down and you’ll finish it without a single burst fruit.”  
Morgan can’t believe what she sees.  
“Even at my personal best I couldn’t pull this off.”  
Candice, fearing the anger of her two teammates, reluctantly reassures Morgan.  
“Karla says you won’t have to successfully complete this. She wants you to practice like the rest of us, but you are already fully combat qualified like Myka, Anna and Helena. You and Alice only have to make it to five fruit, while Claudia and I have to make it to at least three.”  
Claudia sits there with her mouth agape. Candice puts her hand on Claudia’s as she continues.  
“Look, you’re almost there; and I think before the end of this month you’ll be at zero. That’s a HUGE accomplishment!”  
Claudia searches for something to hit Candice with and instead turns towards the villa. Before she can leave, Morgan grabs Claudia’s hand, stopping her in her tracks.  
“Can you take me back? I’m getting tired.”  
Claudia grits her teeth and nods.  
“Yah, me too.”

 

As they disappear down the path Alice looks at Candice who’s nearly in tears.  
“You have no idea how to teach or talk to people, do you?”  
Shaking her head, Candice bites her lip, unsure how to respond.  
“Well fortunately, I do. How about I start helping you, so you can start helping me?”  
Nodding, Candice spends the rest of the evening in the jungle. By two hours past midnight, Alice and Candice wandered into the villa. Though Alice was still covered in blue juice, she was proud of her skills.  
As she turns to enter her room, she reaches out and grasps Candice’s hand. Adjusting her dark locks from her face, she slyly stops Candice.  
“Are you too tired to help me get this junk off me? I could really use the help.”  
Instinctively, Candice begins to refuse, but some part of her screams to stop. As the words get lost on their journey, Candice quietly nods and joins Alice in her room. As she closes the door, she sees Karla sitting at the dining table. Lost in her world, she glances up momentarily and their eyes meet. In the dark, Candice isn’t sure what she sees in Karla’s eyes, but Alice’s passionate pull urges her to close the door quickly. With painful loneliness embracing her, Karla finishes her drink and heads to bed, ignoring the aura of passion filling the villa.


	24. “Melancholy”

Sitting with Karla in a clearing far from the villa, Anna hadn’t spoken a word since they arrived. The roar of birds and wildlife was almost deafening to most people accustomed to either city living or life in the military. Looking around, Anna couldn’t grasp her purpose or place in this world. The peace and serenity surrounding her openly mocks the pain and suffering written on her face. Karla sits at Anna’s feet unsure what words she could offer which would register against Anna’s internal hell. Unlike battle scars, all her wounds were free of scars and she had no evidence of her ordeal. Though no one needed or requested any proof, Karla knew Anna needed the validation of her suffering. Karla’s attention shifts to a tall ebony woman strolling off the path towards them. Dressed in a loose green sundress and matching shoes, she smiles when she meets Karla’s gaze. Stopping at their feet, she takes out a blanket and lays it out beside Anna. Karla rises and hugs her.  
“Thanks for coming Yvonne. Anna, this is Miss Mayers. She’s from Dr. Barlowe’s office, and she’s here to talk to you.”  
Anna stands and shakes her hand. In surprise, Anna looks at Karla as she turns to leave.   
“I’ll be at the villa when you are finished.”  
Nodding, Yvonne motions for Anna to sit with her. 

Karla waits on the porch for three hours until finally Yvonne approaches with Anna. Excusing herself, Anna continues inside while Yvonne sits. Karla, with her eyes red and sore, pours her friend a cup of steaming tea as they sit. With the agonizing weight of the past few weeks stripping her of her confidence and strength, she was relieved that they were finally showing concern for her team. Breaking the silence, Karla decides to just set aside the pleasantries.  
“So did she tell you what they did to her?”

Nodding, Yvonne solemnly replies.  
“Not extremely detailed, but detailed enough. Her story is similar to what we’ve been getting from other survivors. She’s the sixth victim who’s come back with a horrific account of systematic medical torture and suffering. They killed the previous people, and now they have switched tactics to study long term psychological damage. By completely healing and restoring the victims, we were clueless to the horrible tests they were doing before they killed them. The first few victims were ignored due to the lack of physical evidence, and two of them committed suicide. That’s what got Beverly’s attention, and she kept an eye out for all reports of capture and detainment by the enemy.”

Nodding, Karla sips at here tea, before continuing.  
“Did you get to talk to Myka?”

Yvonne affirms and continues.  
“Her and Helena’s stories each show different techniques of torture, extremely scripted and planned. While Helena was physically beaten to within inches of her life, in another room Myka was sexually tortured and sodomized to death; resuscitated and healed numerous times to continue their set number of prescribed tests. This was seen before, that’s why I didn’t pry too much. Doctor Barlowe will come here to personally counsel your team. Doctor Wong is too busy with the military case load, so it will have to be Beverly.”

Karla mulls over the alternatives to the event, and shudders.  
“Thank God and everything that’s holy that it wasn’t Candice or Claudia instead. I doubt there’s any amount of therapy or counseling which could have helped if it were them.”  
She finishes her tea and mentally reviews Anna’s account.  
“What about this new kind of humanoid and bipedal Yamorian?”

Yvonne shrugs.  
“No idea. If anyone knows, that will be High Command, and they aren’t talking to us, but they are present in every medical torture case we’ve seen so far. He isn’t seen in any of the other types of torture, just in the medical ones.”   
Shaking her head, Yvonne finishes her tea and stands.  
“Damn state of affairs we’re in. The war is getting closer to Earth. Rumor mill has that they are making plans to strike the Earth, in an attempt to stretch our defense fleet thin. This is why your team is getting so much attention. We need your people back in the game ASAP. I’ve been told for every mission you go on, the enemy stops to evaluate the results of what you did. They won’t say what specific work you do here, but your operation is now deemed mission essential. Despite our massive battles and victorious direct engagements with the enemy, somehow what you do here is thought of as more significant.”

Standing, Karla walks Yvonne back to her shuttle. As she boards, Karla responds finally.  
“Get us help, and we’ll get these bastards back for this.”

 

Wheeling herself around the research facility, Morgan usually refused help in her wheelchair. Though she loved getting help from the quirky and beautiful Claudia, she kept telling herself the wheels were only temporary. Spending up to four hours a day in therapy, Morgan couldn’t understand Karla’s amazement on how much strength and control she displayed from her regenerated limbs. With her strength equalizing in her arms, she was already lifting weights with her legs. With her effectively walking through the use of supports, she was already months ahead of schedule. After a short trip t the restroom, she joins the team gathered around a chair in front of a pedestal. Sitting on the pedestal, an anti-static bag sits with a small object hidden inside. Alice strides towards the center and sits, finishing her story.  
“I have no idea what my expression was like after I shot him with the extinguisher, but I’m sure it was far from cool. I was thinking his head was on fire, not WAS fire. When he started to charge me, I just reacted!”

Myka, laughing hysterically, asks incredulously.  
“And your first instinct was to hit him in the head with the extinguisher? Ow! I think I don’t want to surprise you in the middle of the night.”

Alice shrugs.  
“I was scared shitless! I swung that little cylinder as hard as I could! He had set fire to several things along the way, and didn’t want to become another one of them. I hope I didn’t kill him or give him permanent brain damage, but he was a threat.”

Helena shakes her head.  
“Well, that’s the way we don’t do it here. Remember that many of the people under the effects of these artifacts are often victims, rather than criminals. Now, you’ve seen the effects of an artifact, but now you will become the victim. Claudia, what did you bring?”

Claudia steps forward grinning.  
“Okay, that’s the test here for everyone. I’m not going to say, but you all have to figure it out. This is half the trouble we have as recovery agents: sorting out the symptoms and isolating the artifact. So I have devised this test for everyone’s benefit. I have four cameras set up to record everything for Alice here so she can review what she was doing while under the influence. I will dump the item into her hands and she will endure what it does to her, while we figure out the effects.” 

Claudia encourages everyone to watch, and her eyes dart around the room. Her eyes glide to Anna who’s sitting on the floor with her knees tight against her chest and her gaze locked far away. Powerless, she dismisses it, and continues. Claudia rolls out a disheveled potted bush and sets it beside Alice. Nodding to her Famori coworker, Hazghia, Claudia gets out of the way as it approaches Alice’s outstretched hands. Opening the anti-static bag, she pours the contents into Alice’s hands and casually steps back. Immediately the long silver necklace makes Alice shed her flippant expression to a slightly serious one. Satisfied, Claudia continues.  
“So, we have Warehouse 1 almost finished, and I’ll need to go there for a few weeks to get it underway. I would love to take all of you with me, but they say I can only bring one person. Anyone interested?”

Hoping to see Anna volunteer, after a few moments Myka nods her head instead.  
“I can’t wait and see what they have done. Have you seen any pics yet?”  
Shaking her head, Claudia enthusiastically replies.  
“NO! They want to surprise me they said. Anyways, I’ll see if we can move our entire operation there. Once I become the caretaker, I’m effectively off the team, you know that?”

Karla solemnly nods.   
“Yes, I’m aware of that. I’ll need to summon another recruit then. I know Mrs. Frederic has her list of candidates, and we’ll have to see who she sends next. Claudia, you were never meant to be an agent here, but you filled that roll beautifully. Thank you.” 

Claudia nods dramatically.  
“You are very gracious my queen.”

Claudia glances over at Alice who has turned towards the bush and began pruning the ugly shrub religiously. It takes a moment and everyone looks at Alice in amazement. Picking up some shears, she begins shaping the bush to its appropriate mass and weeding out the old twigs and dead parts. Sarcastically, Claudia questions Alice.  
“So, is it relaxing?”

Shrugging, Alice replies dryly.  
“I guess. Not my thing, really. I prefer water sports like diving or even beach volleyball.”  
As she talks, she becomes more absorbed in her task, completely ignoring everyone around her. Morgan stares in amazement as Alice methodically beautifies the tiny tree despite lacking any innate skills or knowledge. In a low voice, Morgan speaks to Karla.  
“This is freaky…when’s my turn?”  
A roar of laughter erupts. Holding her belly, Claudia turns to Anna only to have the humor drain away seeing Anna staring at the floor lost far away in her world of pain. 

Dinner came early, as Candice and Alice planned to go night hiking once again, and the team resumes their individual habits. Despite a week of sessions with Doctor Beverly Barlowe, only Anna was not responding to the help. Claudia, livid from the lack of improvement, begs Karla to let her contact Warehouse 13 to get an artifact involved. As the two spirits butt heads, it becomes apparent that there is a serious failure in agreement on how to help the pain-ridden agent. As Candice and Alice depart, Candice doesn’t miss the look of dread in Anna’s eyes as she exits. Hesitating, Anna breaks her stare, stands abruptly and excuses herself.  
“I’m going to take a bath and go to bed.” 

Karla nods.  
“Good idea. Goodnight.”  
Without looking back, she rushes to her room and disappears inside. Against her better judgment, Candice pushes on and leads Alice up the path and the test versus glowing fruit. Five minutes up the path, Candice can’t dispel the gnawing in her stomach and a ringing in the back of her head to return. Five more minutes later, she can’t fight the growing terror to return and she stops. Despite Alice’s reassurance that everything is fine, Candice finally surrenders to her instincts and leads them back to the villa.

 

Claudia couldn’t fight the nagging feeling something nearby wasn’t right. Looking around, she can’t shake the feeling something was off. Worse, the feeling was becoming contagious and Karla abruptly looks up searching for something she can’t nail down. Terror hits Claudia and she launches herself towards Anna’s room. Pushing open the unlocked door, she rushes into the bathroom and screams for Karla. With all her strength, she yanks the submerged Anna from the deep tub and drags her into the bedroom. Anna’s still body freezes Claudia in place as Karla slides to her side. Dressed only in her underwear, it becomes apparent ta her drowning was far from an accident. Throwing her kit down, Karla immediately begins CPR and Claudia joins in by helping to breathe for Karla. Seconds move like minutes as they struggle to resuscitate Anna.   
Candice enters with Alice only to find the chaos of CPR in Anna’s room. Restrained by Myka and Helena, she screams Anna’s name in vain as the pair work tirelessly to revive their friend and teammate. A minute passes, and Anna remains still and unresponsive. As the second minute passes, Candice collapses in the hall crying. As the third minute approaches, a loud cough and sputter pulls Candice’s face from her hands. Jumping up, she finds Anna on her side, spitting up dinner and water. Collapsing against Alice, she pushes away and runs to her room alone. Besieged with towels, Anna lacks the strength to resist and lets them dry her off and change her into dry clothes. Exhausted from her ordeal, she collapses in bed and falls fast asleep after an hour with Helena sitting watch in the corner.   
Sitting in Karla’s room, Claudia stands as she enters. With a burning glare, Karla lacks the strength to fight Claudia. Raising her hands defensively, she nods submissively.   
“Okay, you have my support. I’ll back your proposal. I’ll make the call. Just let me know what you need.”   
Taking out a piece of paper from her pocket, she shoves it into Karla’s closed hand and storms out. Opening it up and closing it, she falls onto her bed and releases a muffled shrilly scream into her pillow, desperate to relieve the stress overwhelming her.


	25. “Expansion”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus internet points if you can guess the origin shows the new agents come from without googling them.

Karla strides towards the conference room in the research center with Claudia bringing up the rear. Passing several Famori agents, Claudia couldn’t feign remembering their names. Since she’d arrived, there were at least fifteen Famori indoctrinated into the program, and her private files told her that many of them were to become regents once the Warehouse was ready. With regular briefings, they were brought up to speed on artifact recovery and operations, and did little else. As they enter the conference room, Claudia is surprised seeing a woman in her early thirties sitting at the table reviewing Myka’s case report still listed as Top Secret. As she begins to storm around the table, the screen comes to life and the woman comes to attention. In the display with a grey receding hair line, a command general nervously clears his throat. Claudia recognizes him as Lieutenant General Ernest Epstein, their number two guy over the warehouse. Though Brigadier General Danvers was below him, Claudia generally preferred talking to her before him as she was more open-minded to artifact situations. The majority of the military officers appointed over them, were simply overwhelmed by the situations which artifacts created.  
The woman across the table lacked a uniform, but her pressed business suit seemed to double for one. With her shoulder-length chestnut hair had the hint of curls, but the weighty volume minimized their drama. Claudia still continued to the other side of the table, but realized she’d better subdue her temper. General Epstein nods seeing them arrive and begins.

“Excellent, everyone is here now. Karla, Claudia, due to the recent turn of events, we’ve processed your recent request for personnel and we have one inbound and your requested item will arrive with her.”  
Claudia makes it to the woman, and swipes the open file folder away from her, and closes it. Taken back, the woman dismisses the insult as the general continues.  
“Oh! And…uh…this is Agent Caitlin Todd. I’m transferring her from my investigation unit here at command, and she will be permanently attached to your unit.”  
Before Claudia can speak, Karla cuts her off.

“Excuse me? I’m the only one who can assign anyone to my team. That was a stipulation to our contract. I had that approved by Command General Morris. You can’t just assign anyone you see fit! This program is a strictly civilian operation. At no time can the military assume control over what we do! Period!”

Claudia notices Agent Todd step back in surprise seeing an apparent ten-year-old give a dressing down to a fifty year-old officer. Claudia notices a proud smile momentarily creep onto the agents face, making her rethink who this new girl is. The general stammers, and hits a button. On a secondary display, a written order from General Morris authorizes Agent Todd’s transfer, and Karla spends but two seconds looking at it before continuing her rant.  
“I don’t care if it is signed by the Pope, President of the Planetary Defense Council, or even God…” Karla stops herself and takes a step back and continues in a calmer tone.  
“Okay, if it were signed by God, I’d let that slide, but not a single one of you in the military are in HIS chain of command! In the third paragraph of that letter it states I still have approve/disapprove authority over this new agent, and I will not be bullied into accepting anyone who does not fit in with MY team! You got that?”  
Nodding his head, General Morris agrees and tries to recover is dignity.  
“Um…Agent Todd has served stupendously as a civilian secret service agent, a Naval Criminal Investigation Service agent, and has made a name for herself in our investigation unit here. Due to your loss, I mean temporary loss of Agents Bering and Krylenko, we felt we should get you some of our top people in place to minimize your down time. If she works out, when your agents are back up to full operational status you can return her to her previous duty, or retain her if she wishes. That would be your call of course.”

Fuming, Karla simply nods, while beaming rays of death from her eyes towards him. To get away from her evil gaze, he signs off abruptly. Karla inhales and exhales dramatically before approaching Agent Todd. Trying to dispel the emotions overwhelming her, Karla composes herself and extends her hand. Agent Todd accepts it and Claudia’s reluctant greetings. After apologizing, Claudia returns the folder and tries to make amends.  
“Um…that was awkward. Sorry about that, I was just trying to protect my friend. So what do you know about what we do here?”  
Caitlin nods.  
“I fully understand. I’d do the same thing in your situation. Um…well I have read all your reports up until this one. I was told it was being held here in the center, now for obvious reasons. I have to admit, these artifacts you talk about are simply unbelievable. If I didn’t know these were credible reports, I’d think you all have gone nuts here.”  
Karla laughs.

“Yes, you get used to that here. So how long have you known, known about us?”  
Claudia sees the reluctance to answer. Caitlin takes a short breath before responding.  
“I was read in the day after you took your team offline. They didn’t want to jump the gun, but wanted someone with an open mind to be able to fill an emergency opening. I’m also fully aware of your team dynamics, and can meld with your team for extended to permanent basis.”  
Both Claudia and Caitlin notice Karla’s expression shift and drop to the floor to control her disdain. Though she regains her composure relatively quickly, it leaves little to the imagination. Rather than dwell on the amount of preplanning the military was doing over her, Karla swings to Caitlin’s last words.  
“You do realize that all of the people I have are female, excluding the Famori, and the bonding is a very noticeable factor.”  
Dismissing her comment, Caitlin shifts her head to her side and replies.  
“Oh you mean that all of them are Bean Flickers, or that they all have keys to the U-Haul?”  
Laughing, Karla drolly replies over her shoulder as she leads them out to the floor.  
“In my time, we called it ‘The Game of Flats’ but yes. My team doesn’t have time for dating, and we are a close knit group. Relationships will naturally form, and they have.”

Nodding, Caitlin jogs to keep up with Karla’s fast stride.  
“I have had experience in this area, and I am not dissuaded to join your team because of it. I mean that this isn’t a bad thing for me. I’m just getting out of a relationship, and spending time on an all-girl team is refreshing. No machismo or crappy male antics would be a nice change for me.”  
As Karla motions for her to wait as she gathers the team together at numerous locations across the center, Claudia motions to sit with her.   
“So how long have you been here?”  
Recollecting, Caitlin nods her head while thinking.

“Since the spring of 2005. I got really disillusioned after working this murder case which we tracked back to a pedophile of all things. Not to go into the gory details, but it turns out both governments involved were willing to look the other way due to the pervert’s ‘strategic’ value. They eventually got rid of him, but it got me really disgusted with my government. Then as I sat in a café near my place after work, an old lady just sat herself down in my booth. It was like she knew exactly what I’d been through, and knew me! We talked for hours. She understood my turmoil and offered me a chance to do a job which the lines of ethics and morality wouldn’t be compromised for political agendas or alliances. And as I was trying to back out, stating how I just couldn’t quit NCIS, she pulled out her phone and called someone who directly connected her to NCIS Director Morrow. He verified that I was sure this is what I wanted to do, and he said he’d take care of everything on his end. And a month later, after enduring decon isolation procedures, here I am. I heard a rumor that my doppelgänger was killed a month later in my place. Makes you think: that should have been me.”  
Claudia shakes her head in disbelief.

“Wow, five years. I’m just approaching my first year here still. Are you moving into the villa?”  
Shrugging, Caitlin starts to reply, but Karla interjects instead.  
“Of course. We still have the top floor of the villa which is empty. I’m going to move people around on rooms now, mostly because of Anna, and our inbound will need a place to stay. I had planned to have the individual teams on each floor, but I think we need to keep us as one big family for now. Once everyone is trained up, then I’ll split up the team. I was told you have field experience already.”  
Caitlin stands as she responds.  
“That is correct. I’ve been out on numerous reconnaissance ops into enemy zones; got my own gear and everything.”  
Nodding, Karla invites her to the center floor with full introductions. Claudia doesn’t miss anything and jabs at Karla.  
“So SHE doesn’t need to get Candice’s training either?”  
Shaking her head, Karla whispers to her.  
“Nope, and neither do you anymore.”  
Taken back, Claudia delves further.  
“What do you mean? I’m only at 3 fruit.”

Karla keeps an ear to the flow of conversations and maintains part of her attention to Caitlin while she continues with Claudia.  
“You’re grounded, officially. You can’t leave the planet and no trips out by yourself without a security detachment. The Warehouse is going to come online in a few months and intel has briefed me that you are a target. The Yamorians have somehow heard that you are extremely valuable asset and are paying close attention to our recovery operations, which disturbs me more. How in the hell are they getting their info!”  
Realizing she said that far louder than she intended, she begins to apologize, but Caitlin stops her.  
“Don’t apologize. Problem is that we have a mole.” 

 

As Morgan strides barefoot from her room after her shower, she grabs a tall glass of ice tea and sits beside Claudia, signaling Caitlin to begin.   
“For the past eight years, command has suspected a spy network was in operation here on this planet. I was tasked with exposing this network, but it is spread out with both Famori and Human agents. I along with many of us feel there’s probably only two dozen, but we think they are all in positions of power. They are careful not to place any suspicion on themselves or anyone around them, and they are acting as true patriots to their cause. There’s no rhyme or reason in how they operate and we can’t isolate any particular pattern of behavior. Seeing the looks in your eyes, I’m telling you this because my Famori agents have confirmed that the leak is not yet in your people Karla or you. We do feel it will eventually extend into your operation, and we feel one of the future regents will be an agent. This is from what has transpired in the past and present in Warehouses 12 and 13, and we are using those events as a model to what the Yamorians may seek.”  
Helena is the first to break the silence, unable to hide her concern.  
“Could they be making double agents? Like brainwashing or mind control?”

Shrugging dramatically, Caitlin grimaces.  
“We have no idea. We’ve explored that avenue, but can’t isolate anything definitive. We did do an in depth physical analysis and we found some very interesting organisms which have taken residence in us while here, but we couldn’t find any associations with the intelligence leaks.”

Karla clears her throat.  
“Yes, remember those inoculations everyone gets every 8 months? That’s to keep the little critters under control inside of us.”  
Claudia and Myka grimace and make a yucky expression almost at the same time, making Morgan bury her face in her arms on the table laughing. To everyone’s shock, the morose and sedate Anna chooses this moment to finally speak. With her cracked and hoarse voice, she emphasizes every word so that she’s understood.  
“If they wanted to, they could execute brainwashing easily. They have demonstrated sufficient understanding of alien anatomy and technological to biological interfaces. All they would need is time; a month, no more than two against a strong will.”

Candice seems to light up, and extracts her laptop. As the conversations continue, she tunes them out, developing a data search program. By the time Caitlin ends and everyone is dispersing, Candice hooks Anna’s arm as she passes. Asking her to hang behind, she begins asking her specific yes and no questions to help her program. After an hour, Anna meanders to the couch and collapses back into her grey world of depression.   
By dinner, Candice intercepts Caitlin as she passes. Putting a thumb drive into her hand, Candice closes it as she speaks.  
“Just activate the program, and it will scrounge the records database for likely suspects based on time periods which they could have been converted. You’re going to have hundreds of suspects. From what I got from Anna, they may not even know they are agents, like a program running in the background. Make sure you scour the list first, in case someone on the list might be someone you would forward it to…a person you might believe you can trust. A warning though, you may not like what you see.”

 

Since the team went down, part of Myka’s recovery involved taking up a skill which is completely foreign to her. From a long list she blindly set her finger down onto piloting. After learning basic Famori, she had been waiting for a pilot to allow her to join them in the cockpit. Speaking in what the locals called Fenish, a mixture of English and Famori common, Myka was slowly getting the rest of the villa up to speed. This greatly improved the comradery between the two races, and the inner workings of the warehouse agents. For the first time since they began their journey, lunch involved the entire warehouse of Humans and Famori sitting together enjoying each other’s company, laughing, joking, and bonding at a level even Claudia admired. In her mind’s eye, she could easily see Pete, Steve, Artie, and for a moment Leena sitting around the table.

As Karla leads Morgan, Alice, and Myka up the ramp of the shuttle, they place a large gym bag in an empty seat and stow their energy rifles in a bin beside each seat. Comfortable with traveling in full armor and combat rifles, the team settles in as their Famori enters. Pausing, he looks to Myka and motions to take the copilot seat, which Karla usually occupies. With a grin, Karla takes Myka’s empty chair as she watches Myka finally getting her wish. Falling back on her training, she goes through the pre-flight checklists as the pilot stoically observes. After ten minutes he signals his approval and takes the ship into orbit. After docking, he signs her letter, allowing her to continue her flight training. In Famori he whispers to her she’ll take it back on her own. Wearing a huge grin, she nods and joins her team exiting out the rear toting their rifles. Joining the security detail, the recovery agents listen to their briefings and board. After another half hour flight, they unload on a bleak moon, just outside of the Famori system. It was the closest arc that the Famori had ever authorized, mostly due to the loss of the previous arc. The closer proximity allowed for a greater military presence and response time. Yet any closer to the system, the gravity from the star would affect the transfer process. With a pair of battleships standing guard all the time, no further attacks had occurred. 

As they look around with their weapons drawn, the palladium arc comes to life; and moments later the first traveler steps through. In five minutes, twenty personnel are loaded in the transport and are away. As they accelerate back home, nothing is said to their two new agents other than verifying their identities and conditions. Getting them into armor, they patiently wait as the ship makes the short trip to the Famori world. After disembarking, Myka touches down at the landing pad, and they transfer to their shuttle back to the villa. While inside the second shuttle, the two finally peel out of their pressure suits and discard the sweaty nylon and latex gear. As the shuttle lifts off, Candice opens the gym bag and extracts two packages, each with their names labeled on the top. Picking up the first, she asks them.  
“Heaven Kogo?”

And Japanese woman smiles and motions to toss it to her. With a flick from Candice, the package lands in her hands and she tears it open to get her clothes. Candice reaches into the bag once more, and pulls out the last package and reads.  
“That would leave this one for Wendy Watson.”   
She tosses it towards the half-naked Hispanic woman, who grins as it lands in her arms. Karla, freed from the cockpit, turns to her two new agents.  
“Welcome to Famoria Prime and to Warehouse One.”


	26. “Efficacy”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A step back now.

Four weeks prior.

Sitting down, in her bedroom chair Myka tries to get comfortable as Beverly sits across from her. Setting down her recorder, she turns it on and begins.  
“We’re on the 4th week of your sessions, and are you up for another revisiting of your rape?”  
Nodding Myka, clears her throat before speaking robotically.  
“Yah. It was extremely warm. I hated the camouflage uniforms we were wearing, they made the heat stifling and overbearing. That was the last thing I remember before waking up in the cave. Then it was completely dark; I only had my sports bra and panties on and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I felt a pop against my thigh, like a tiny needle or something. Then I felt a tentacle wrap around my neck and it slid under my arms to hoist me up. I heard Helena rouse and she was with me as we’re carried out of the cave; she only had her underwear on too. I felt druggy and confused, but it was wearing off fast. In minutes were going into the ship, and Helena is literally tossed like a ragdoll into a room by herself, while I’m carried into a room and dropped onto the floor. I’m still too weak to fight as he yanks my bra and panties off me and deposits them into an overhead bin. I’m afraid and confused…of what exactly, I’m not sure. I guess I knew what it was going to do, but I was keeping an open mind to the alternatives like examinations or tests.”  
Beverly notes the subtle change in Myka’s voice as she continues, a drastic improvement from previous weeks, as her voice would slip and crack just after leaving the cave. As Myka continues, she notes her ability to get through the entire story without needing a drink of water, unlike before, and she finishes with a bit more detail like the smells and backgrounds sounds, absent from all previous versions and reports. As she finishes her account, Beverly shows her images of Yamorians and scans Myka’s physiological responses, while asking what her emotional reactions are upon seeing the realistic pictures of her rapists, generic tentacles, sterile examination rooms, and various colors. As she puts away the images she throws a curveball, by asking how her and Helena are doing and how intimate they are compared to before. Myka takes another drink, surprised by the new question.  
“Well, we’re closer, we spend a lot of time together in each other’s arms.”  
Beverly takes off her reading glasses and sets them down.  
“How often did you two engage in sexual relations before?”  
Blushing, Myka covers her face momentarily before laughing nervously.  
“God, we made love at least twice a day, if work allowed…on average once every other day though.”  
Beverly nods, slips back on her glasses, and scribbles in her notes.  
“And now?”  
Myka can’t hide her change in body language. Like the rug pulled out from under her feet, she takes a defensive posture and bringing her knees to her chest.  
“I don’t know. I mean I love her and she loves me, but I…I feel dirty down there and I don’t want her to see the bruises and scars they left.”  
Subtly confused, Beverly flips through her file before composing a reply.  
“I wasn’t aware of any? Did they resurface after your return here?”  
Faced with the truth, Myka stammers and chokes.  
“No…I mean I feel like they are always there, not matter how much healing I get.”  
Beverly adjusts in her chair.  
“The Yamorians healed you and Anna completely and entirely after each event, leaving no scars or bruises, unlike Helena. They only healed her broken limbs and life-threatening injuries. When you were examined here, we noted the same.”  
With an annoyed glare, Myka fires back.  
“I know! It doesn’t change how I feel though.”  
Setting her glasses aside once again, Beverly stares intently into Myka’s eyes.  
“Do you think the Famori could heal you?”  
Myka takes a minute mulling over the answer. Taking a sip of her honey tea, she finally replies.  
“I don’t know…maybe? I really don’t know.” 

After an hour, Helena exits her room, with Beverly trailing a moment later. She scopes Myka brushing Anna’s wet hair on the couch and joins them. Watching Anna, Helena is amazed that someone of her stoic and rigid background could find great solace in such a simple act. With her arms wrapped around her legs with her knees held tightly to her chest, Anna seems locked in a distant repeating thought unable or unwilling to escape. With her work cut out for her, Beverly says her goodbyes and promises to return in two days. Myka tenderly rubs Anna’s back, like she might a small child and lets Claudia take Anna with her for a walk with Morgan and Alice. Armed with their Tesla’s and pistols, they depart leaving Myka and Helena alone. Helena peaks at the clock and counts at least four hours before Karla and Candice will return from a meeting at high command, and encourages Myka to join her for a hot bath. After a long hesitation, Myka finally agrees.  
With exaggerated slowness, the pair spend two hours washing each other, trying to discuss anything but what they experienced. Inevitably, they find themselves thrust back to the issue overwhelming them at various levels. Leaning back against Helena’s chest, Myka lets the flowery oils and salts permeate her body and melt away the residual anxiety from her session with Beverly. Staring off into oblivion, Myka finally rouses and breaks the eerie silence blanketing the couple.  
“I was so worried they were doing to you and Anna, what they were doing to me. When I saw Anna, I was sure they had; but when I saw you, it only confused me.”  
In tears sobbing, Myka struggles to remain coherent as Helena soothingly massages and rubs her back.  
“In my head I know it had nothing to do about sex and everything to do about humiliation and destruction, but it was sexual to me. They didn’t know me or cared to…I was this meaningless object that was made to suffer.”  
Helena tightens her hold around Myka and rests her forehead on Myka’s shoulder.  
“Sweetie, they are almost all female, and everything we know says they don’t use their tentacles as reproductive devices in any capacity. It’s equivalent to someone using a hammer or bat as a surrogate penis. They don’t think that way, but somehow they found out we did. Up until recently, they never thought this way, but now they are.”  
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Myka turns and cries into Helena’s chest.  
“I know! I know that this is some sick research project, and…”  
Cupping Myka’s head, Helena soothes her as she bawls uncontrollably. 

 

Morning comes as it usually does with a small fanfare of mindless and petty arguments about artifacts, chores, and what should be made later for dinner. Trivia often works itself into their mornings, and carries forward up to, if not past lunch. As breakfast passes, Myka and Helena grab their weapons and meet Guradi, a stiff Famori with a no nonsense attitude towards teaching. Rigidly he reviews Myka’s test scores from the previous day, and tells her to work on her simulator landings. Loading into the shuttle, he flies them to the training center, an hour away, and formulates a rigorous day of training while Helena works at improving her computer skills. Helena watches as Myka endures hours of flight training, providing moral support when Myka approaches her wit’s limits.  
With the mid-afternoon bringing an end to a day filled with tests, simulator training and a short training flight over the surface, Myka works on her Famori linguistic skills with Helena who had much of it lapse since she left. With most of the port communication in English, Myka still had to grasp the basics of the Famori tongue for travel across the surface, which was relegated to the locals. For a people who only until seventy years ago began to fully embrace technology, they were rapidly coming up to speed with the intricacies of modern logistics. Relying heavily on Humans to teach them the ‘mystical’ knowledge of logistics, the Famori were only just abandoning their beliefs in magic as the explanation of advanced science. Ironically, many the things which the Famori accomplished could only be explained as magic by the Humans who witnessed them.  
Landing at the air field near the villas, he gives Myka a detailed list of topics to read and study for the next session in two days. Splitting up time every two days gave her time to see Beverly and work in the artifact labs. For once, she was confronting a horrible reality not caused by the very thing which she swore would kill her. Since she jumped into the artifact “business,” she feared it would be the life of her, either being destroyed, slaughtered, or simply driven insane in some fashion instigated by the powers artifacts exuded. Now, she faced off not against some supernatural force, but one all too common and horrible for it slithered out from the darkest of reaches of the soul, even if they weren’t Human.  
With that knowledge, she still couldn’t find strength to shove aside the pain from her phantom scars. Fortunately Beverly was a patient and concerned doctor who didn’t make light or dismiss the effects of her ordeal, but Myka’s head was not so forgiving. With reason bashing at her pain during the day; at night, it offered no help in her sleep. Despite the turmoil inside, Myka was determined to regain the passion which the Yamorians stole from her. It was the little things which she decided would enable her to regain the strength to let Helena get close to her again. Baby steps, Beverly reminded her; small steps towards efficacy, not vaulting leaps or marathons. The bubble bath was her first serious step towards regaining her freedom from the pain, partial release by being naked yet partially concealed by the suds. Amazed she found the strength to resist the terror and impulse to flee or cover up, she knew the process was not instantaneous by any definition, but she knew it was painfully slow for Helena to endure. Yet, Helena displayed the control and patience which Myka doubted she could possess if tables were turned. This knowledge above all reaffirmed her love and admiration for the aged hero.  
Her next few weeks were just continuations or repeat performances of the previous ones, with minor improvements in her training and conditioning. With increased weapon training and spending hours on the firing range, the team was becoming accustomed to a high tempo of education and learning. When not discovering and improving their combat skills, Claudia regularly led them in the latest news in artifacts and technology. Her latest project was enhancing their combat rifles with Tesla technology, and her three prototypes showed extreme promise. Each subtly different, they utilized the latest in Claudia’s Tesla upgrades and integrated the high energy discharge coils used in the lethal military versions. With drastically improved ranges and take-down force, a rifle of this caliber was but a dream back on Earth. Her prototypes offered the pros from a Tesla, with the range and take-down strength of a combat rifle. Her tests also showed great success versus their machines and armor which until now required the use of high explosives or combat rifles. With the capability to disable and capture the enemy effectively, the designs could soon be passed along to the factories and distributed to the front line war-fighters. With Human troops and battleships arriving daily, the Yamorians would soon be outnumbered and the tides could easily change in the Famori’s favor.  
For Myka and Anna, this mattered little as they struggled daily to survive the overwhelming emotional damage their enemy inflicted upon them. Though they suffered equally, Myka couldn’t help to wonder if she was the lucky one or not. The psychological wounds and scars Anna carried were unfathomable. Helena suggested privately that Anna must have been fully prepared for the torture her and Myka suffered, and they knew somehow that it was the only method she might be susceptible to. Their level of preparedness scared Myka, or perhaps their quality of intel. As she watches Anna struggle to lift her lifeless body around, day in and out, Myka can’t help but dwell on Beverly’s words of support and insight. She finally threw her full attention into getting to know the physiology and psychology of their enemy. With the bulk of the research accomplished by the Jaggot Humia, an old enemy of the Yamorians thousands of years ago, the Famori acquired their databases decades before the Yamorians eradicated the race. Reading the texts backwards and forwards, she admitted that Beverly understood her ordeal far better than she initially imagined.  
“They’re an intergalactic fire ant.” Myka exclaimed one evening.  
Helena looked up from her computer programming book, more out surprise than anything. Myka shakes her head as she continues.  
“They have a primary queen or leader, and she selectively chooses which warriors are provided viable sperm so they can make nests on target worlds. The latest dissections show only fifteen percent of the troops killed had sperm stored to fertilize eggs, which far less than what was found during the first war which was as high as ninety percent. If just one of these troop ships makes it to Earth, we’ll be overrun in a short number of years. Just one ship crashing in the Congo or Amazon would spell the end for all Human life.”  
Helena slides close to Myka as she speaks.  
“That’s why I brought you here. If there was anyone who could help me stop them, it would be you.”  
With a weighted sigh, Myka looks away from the books.  
“Yet, here we are with Warehouse One in construction, artifacts everywhere, and no closer to stopping these aliens.  
Helena can only shake her head in disagreement.  
“I wouldn’t say that. Without our work, this war would have been on this world’s surface already. They’ve actually recoiled numerous times after we’ve gone out on the field. What they are doing now is out of desperation, not pure research. If they were to simply attack and kill us, our ranks would simply be replaced with motivated and retribution seeking people. No, they are testing ways to instill fear in us and cripple the way we do our jobs, because they understand that simply killing us isn’t effective. They are coming to know us, as we are beginning to really understand them.”  
Myka sets down the data-reader and looks at Helena incredulously.  
“I don’t know what you are reading, but that’s not what I’m getting from these reports.”  
Laughing, Helena continues.  
“That’s the point. The Yamorians we see here of fifty or sixty years ago never had to give an opponent this much thought and consideration, but now they do. This is exactly why we are such a threat to them. For the first time in a long time, they have to work for this victory. They had forgotten what it was like to face off against an opponent with equal will and guile; and the tactics we’re seeing, no matter how cruel and loathsome, are a result of their frustration.”  
Myka, following Helena’s train of thought, continues for her.  
“So, they lack the emotion and feelings we have for individuality, for the most part. They are hive minds, who don’t experience many individual emotions aside from anger and pleasure derived from obedience to accomplishing goals. The rational part of my mind gets it, but the emotional side can’t help but attach human dynamics to what they do. I think that’s why I’m having a hard time coming to terms to what they did to me.”  
Helena cups Myka’s hand.  
“My Beautiful, you’re having a hard time coming to terms because you’re not a cold emotionless machine. They hurt you, and there is no magic pill to take the hurt away. I love you unreservedly, as do your friends here, and we will not let them take the wonderful and gorgeous creature of which you are away from us.”  
Nodding, Myka smiles and stands abruptly. Dragging Helena up with her, she yells to Karla, sitting at the lab table.  
“I’m calling it an early day and taking my beautiful girl back to our place. Don’t ring us.”  
As chuckles bounce around the room, Myka And Helena disappear and miss dinner.


	27. Balancing the Scales

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating story with the new crossovers from Samurai Girl and Middleman.

As their two new members set their gear in their rooms, Helena advises them relax and get comfortable. After unpacking their clothes and gear sent ahead earlier, they eventually find their way to the dining room table, recently expanded to accommodate four additional place settings. When asked why four, Karla only shrugged and resumed writing in her logs. As the evening continues, Agent Watson leaves her room clad in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. Wearing her pink mouse slippers, she finds the coffee maker and begins brewing a few cups and joins Karla and Claudia looking over a satellite map of a recent dig site. Setting down a large purple pelican case with serial numbers written on a brass plaque, she ogles the map.  
Breaking the ice, Karla looks up from the image smiling.  
“Everything in order with your belongings and room?”  
Wendy has to fight the urge to laugh hearing a child speak like she’s in charge, but reminds herself that she is in charge.  
“Oh yah! It’s great, awesome. Um….who gets this?”  
Pushing the purple box forward, roughly two feet long and ten inches wide and six thick, she clears her throat inviting someone to take it. Karla starts to take it but suddenly remembers what it is. Pointing at Claudia with her pen, she immediately replies.  
“Oh! That would be for our Caretaker, Miss Donovan here.”  
Claudia’s eyes widen and she greedily liberates it from Wendy. Twisting the pressure equalizer, it makes a sharp hiss as it sucks in air greedily. Popping the latches open and peeking inside, she smiles and closes it with a loud pop. Pulling it next to her chair on the floor, she smiles and bows her head.  
“Thank you. We’ll do this after breakfast tomorrow. Anna is fast asleep, and its best she gets a full night’s rest beforehand.”  
Nodding, Karla motions for Wendy to view the map with them as they review the latest reconnaissance pictures of Hurston Crown, one of the latest battlegrounds captured by the Famori. Informing her that in the previous war it was a key supply depot for both sides, it was also a stepping stone to invading Famori Prime. With a three month battle finally over, Karla had only sleepless nights to look forward to until the artifact cleanup was completed. With dozens of battlefields on the ground to scrutinize, she relegated the orbital clean up to Candice. With long hours modifying a dozen shuttles to scan and recover any artifacts in orbit, the pace was bound to be excruciatingly slow.   
Karla points out a string of ground sites as she addresses everyone at the table.  
“These were utilized by both sides and by whoever owned the base at the time. If we have artifacts, they’ll be here. I was told that they didn’t have time to extract all their gear and equipment when they pulled out, so we should have a considerable amount of confiscated intel. They fought to the last second as they were boarding shuttles and troopships leaving the sites, so we think they left behind a treasure trove of artifact gear and scanners. Wendy, I understand you already have the clearances for our work, that’s why they entrusted you with the artifact you gave Claudia. I have to admit that I’m completely unfamiliar with the Middleman Division.”  
Wendy only nods in agreement.  
“Until five weeks ago, I had no idea about artifacts or what these warehouses of yours were. My boss’s life was on the line; and in order to save his, I had to completely abandon my life, friends, cheating boyfriend, and career. It was his life, or I had to drop off the face of the Earth, so it was a no-brainer. They said they would help me disappear, but I never imagined this in a million years: another planet. Who’d-of-thought. Oh! And I was given some reports talking about torture and abuse of prisoners by the enemy. Care to enlighten me?”  
Before Karla can speak, Claudia interjects.  
“The Yamorians, the enemy, captured and tortured our team for an ungodly amount of time. They repeatedly beat Helena to within inches of her life, they violated Myka sexually, and what they did to Anna…well it’s practically indescribable.”  
Wendy stares infinitely at the map, blown away by the revelation. As she gathers her thoughts, Heaven and Candice exit her room discussing the planet’s ecology and flora. Enthusiastic about the morning run, she couldn’t wait to get a look around the villas.   
Karla wearily sighs.  
“The report is quite detailed and it’s best you both review it. It’s left severe psychological scars on Anna and we’re resorting to extreme measures to undo the damage. This is an important point you both need to realize: the enemy is ruthless, uncouth, and have no moral boundaries. Capture is not an option, so always keep escape plans viable. We can replace equipment and recover intel, but not you or any one of our team. We got lucky with our team this time, but it was a fluke. They never realized that some artifacts can bite back without cause, and this time it chose to let us take it over them. The report is over the past six months, so it’s not just that one incident.”  
Candice is leery to look Heaven in the eyes, as is Claudia. Wendy nods heavily, and rises from the table. Accepting the weighty file folder from Karla, she heads straight to her room and closes the door. Reluctantly, Heaven follows suit and tells everyone goodnight with a copy of the folder in her hand. As Karla rises, she sighs trying to relieve the weight bearing down on her.  
“What have I gotten you kids involved in?”  
Without waiting for a reply, Karla leaves the table and exits the villa wearing her running gear. Claudia waited until past two in the morning before finally retiring for the night.

Packing into the shuttle, the team dusts off the landing pad, leaving Helena and Myka behind to catch a second shuttle. With the majority of them chatting up their new arrivals, Wendy once again retold her reasons for coming to the warehouse. With little news from Heaven, she finally spoke up.  
“I’m here to fulfill an ancient prophecy…I know it sounds corny, but it’s true. An ancient evil is rising and a prophet said I had to go on a faraway journey where ‘the sun rises in the Southern Cross.’ After a year of searching, I had this old black woman find and tell me she could help get where I was searching for, but it would mean sacrificing everything I own including friends and allies. It took me two weeks to call her back. Apparently on this world every evening you can see the Earth’s sun through the opposite side of what we call on Earth the Southern Cross. Technically this world isn’t on the opposite side of the universe, more like a system near the middle of what Earth sees as the Southern Cross. I know it’s a stretch, but it’s all I had to work with. Aside from some obscure prophetic message, I have very little else to go off of.”  
From the cockpit Karla speaks over the intercom.  
“Don’t laugh at her story. Many of us felt drawn by an indescribable force to go through that portal and fulfill some greater purpose, even in the old days. Helena and I were no different. I met her with dozens of other intrepid explorers and adventurers to come here and make a difference. Besides, Heaven is an incredibly valuable agent when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, like Anna and Morgan. She’s a superior warrior and I’m sure will make a name for herself in no time.”  
With a sarcastic scowl, Alice yells up to Karla.  
“So what does that make the rest of us? Chopped liver?”  
Over the roar of the engines and laughter, Karla finally responds.  
“You know what I meant! Stop twisting my words, or I’ll make you walk from here.”  
Heaven shakes her head in disbelief and turns to Anna.  
“And Karla is how old again?”  
Anna pauses to get the right number.  
“Over a hundred and twenty I believe.”  
Claudia interjects seeing the strain on Anna’s face from interacting.  
“The locals…Famori…don’t like change. They live naturally several hundred years, and they hate to reestablish new connections after making one. Um…I’m not saying it right, it’s complicated. They see us as frail and finite because we have such short life cycles, and they don’t want to bother with making new friends every twenty or thirty years. It’s a major inconvenience in their eyes.”  
From across the shuttle Alice interjects.  
“They’re not all like that, but the majority of their elders are. The younger ones are growing up around humans and are starting to appreciate the joys of making new friends, especially during war time.”  
Heaven thinks deeply before asking next question.  
“So the portal we went through isn’t the same as what Karla and Helena went through originally?  
A long silence erupts, and Karla reluctantly replies.  
“No, but I can’t go into details here. It’s classified still. Sorry, that’s the best I can answer. We’re starting our descent.”  
Awkward glances are exchanged as the shuttle comes to an abrupt stop at the research center. Exiting, Heaven and Wendy are simply amazed at the simple exterior. Two stories high, the lower level wasn’t very wide when compared to the upper enclosed observation deck. After a number of security checks, they are allowed to proceed to the elevators which bring them down five hundred feet to the mammoth research bays and test facilities. Toting the purple armored case, Claudia disappears down a corridor while the rest head straight to the open area littered with tables and chairs.   
As the new members of the team are introduced to their fellow Famori agents, Anna is closely watched by Morgan. Fearing a repeat attempt of suicide, no one took the responsibility lightly, especially Morgan. From her days following her injuries, she understood better than anyone the depression consuming the agent. For veterans like herself, suicide was not something to laugh or scoff at. The pain the Russian agent was experiencing was no different than that of her friends and companions who survived Iraq. A part of her would trade places with her to provide her temporary relief; while the knowledge of what they did to her keeps her firmly planted from such heroic actions. The idea that she could weather such torture and suffering, better than another, was simply insane. She wanted to give some support or offer some words to help her, but she couldn’t fathom anything beyond saying: “I’m sorry.” She cursed herself for being so pathetically useless in another woman’s time of need, and it kept her silent.  
As the introductions dwindled, the chief psychologist Beverly Barlowe enters alongside Myka and Helena. After a few handshakes and pleasantries, Karla leads her to the observation room, while everyone else is told to meet in conference room eight. With a packed room, the team joins numerous Famori who stare intently at the display. Fed from the Observation room where Anna sits, they wait quietly in anticipation for the event.  
Beverly hardly approved of the taping and remote viewing of the memory removal, but understood the order came from beyond her authority. At a small table sat Anna and Claudia, facing each other with a bronze scale set up between them. As Anna nervously sits and fidgets in her chair, Claudia attaches the balancing arms to the back of the scales from a wooden box holding numerous small lead weights. The ancient bronze scale, cast in the shape of a lithe girl standing on one leg, had each of the girl’s arms holding a bronze bowl by chains. As the arms stopped moving, Claudia removes a single weight while wearing her purple gloves and nods to Beverly to begin.  
“Anna. Open your hands, and hold the weight tightly.”  
Nodding, she accepts the small lead piece and closes her hands around it.  
“Now concentrate on your ordeal. Focus on the beginning of when it became too much for you to handle and play the rest in your mind until you passed out for the last time. Now replay that memory over and over in your mind and send it to your hands. Imagine it’s a physical thing, something you can grasp and mold. Now imagine it becoming that little object in your hands.”  
From the conference room, Helena speaks to the crowd.  
“The scale belonged to Pontius Pilot. It was said the only way he found peace before he died was finding a means of balancing the scales against what he did to Christ. This scale can selectively remove memories and store it for future recall. Not sure if he truly found peace, but the carbon dating of the scale was dead on, so who knows. We’re removing the most unbearable elements of her ordeal so she can cope. In time we hope she can take back in the memory, and manage it; but until then we can’t let her kill herself over the pain.”  
After an hour, Claudia motions to continue beyond recalling the horrors. With tears streaming from Anna’s eyes, Claudia intercedes.   
“Anna, sweetie, please place the weight on the bowl next to you.”  
Complying, the scale drops down under the weight. Following Claudia’s further instructions, she opens a small bowl filled with nuts, berries, and chunks of dark chocolate. As she carefully places various pieces on the opposite scale, Helena continues without her knowledge.  
“The items in the bowl were things which Anna loved to eat. Only the right balance will work, so it’s going to take her a while to find the right combination which perfectly balances the two bowls. And no, it’s not the actual weight of the items anymore. It’s the weight of the memories which she’s balancing. However it balances out, it will cost her heavily in love. If it’s too much of anything, it may mean she’ll never be able to enjoy eating it ever again. They say Pilot never touched pork, lamb or pepper afterwards. We don’t know for sure really. Supposedly, this hasn’t been used in over a hundred years, and the last owner wasn’t very forthcoming with details.”  
As everyone looks on, Anna slowly achieves balance as she removes a blueberry and places the last chunk of dark chocolate in its place. An eerie calm settles over the room, and Anna finally stops. With a meek smile she lays her head on the table and falls asleep. As the onlookers gaze, the tray piled with chocolate and nuts liquefy and form a teardrop shape. Resembling a single dark chocolate-covered almond, it rests on the bowl, balancing against the ancient tiny weight on the opposite side.  
With small tongs, Claudia grasps the chocolate item and places it in a locket, safely protected from the elements. Clad in her purple gloves she lifts the necklace off the table and secures it around Anna’s neck.  
Helena sighs in relief and addresses the crowd.  
“And that’s it everyone.”


	28. Tenacity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My life has become quite complicated, but I found time for one update.

Beverly Barlowe exits Anna’s room, chatting with the agent trailing two steps behind her. After exchanging a brief hug, Anna strolls into the kitchen. Passing Karla in her running attire leading Beverly out the front door, she pours a hot cup of tea and grabs a handful of sweet biscuit cookies. With the team hovering in the living room, Anna takes her drink and glides into an open spot between Candice and Alice on the couch, laying her head back. An uncomfortable silence descends around her, and she sucks in a deep breath before speaking. 

“I’m back.”

As she’s smothered in affection, Anna laughs and begs for them not to spill her cup of honey tea. Alice shifts uncomfortably watching Candice snuggle against her old friend the same way she lays against her at night. Suppressing a surge of jealousy, Alice excuses herself and retreats to her bedroom. Changing into her drab black and grey running gear, she recites how she’s coming into a preexisting team, and she’s the newbie. As she is finishes tying her shoe laces, Candice steps into the room and sits next to her. 

“I wish I could say that we’ll never do that again, but I’d be lying. We went through a great deal of stuff before you got here, and we’re closer than when we first met…somewhere between BFFs and intimately close. Where exactly, I’m not sure, but you are the one I’m with right now. She has a great deal of coping to go, and I want to help her. If you read the reports from that blasted artifact forest world, you know I saved her life. I never made a significant difference in anyone’s life before that day, and it changed me. For the first time in my meager existence, I feel empowered to change this universe for better or worse. To turn my back in her time of need is disgusting for a friend or fellow agent. If the situation was reversed, I would be having the same conversation with her about you.”

Nodding, Alice takes a deep breath and lets the air dribble from her lungs.  
“I know. I know that you two have a non-sex history, and that I’m coming into the scene a quarter of the way into the movie. I’m going out for a jog to clear my mind. I do my best mental sorting on the track or trails. It’ll do me good.”

As Candice jumps up to get changed, Alice immediately stops her.  
“Alone. I need time to untangle my head without your sexy sweaty thighs glistening next to me.”

Candice blushes and covers her face as she laughs hysterically.  
Alice feels a warm surge flow through her and turns away. She’s amazed that her anger and jealousy is blasted away with such a simple act, and she fights to scoop up the redhead and throw her on the bed and forgo her run. Sticking to her guns, she bends down and kisses Candice passionately before leaving. Candice slides onto the bed and smiles deviously.  
“Don’t be out too late. I’m not a night owl anymore.”

Shaking her head trying to dislodge the sight from her short-term memory, she stands and leaves before she finds an excuse to do her run later tonight. Passing the laughing and festive members of her team, she rushes out the door and begins stretching. An unexpected rustling of leaves pulls her attention towards the lighted path. As her eyes scan the foliage, Karla suddenly appears next to her and she leaps four feet away without thinking. Karla, taken back, apologizes profusely.  
“Whoa killer! I didn’t realize you didn’t see me! Hey! Mind if I join you?”

As Alice devises an excuse, Karla stops her.  
“Great! How far you going tonight?”

Alice glares at her incredulously as she bites her tongue.  
“I guess five miles. I needed a long run alone, but that’s not going to happen.”

Grinning, Karla stretches alongside Alice before they race off out of sight of the villas.  
“Yah, I know what you mean. I like to walk in the gardens at night to clear my head, but a good run does the same thing for me. So how are you coming along in the team? I see you and Candice have hooked up.”

Shaking her head, Allice takes off running, and realizes Karla will not give up or get the point.  
“Yah, we really kicked it off. She’s a really wild girl, despite what she projects. She doesn’t hesitate speaking her mind when it’s important to her.”

Karla easily keeps pace with the long-legged runner, and shows no signs of tiring in her voice.  
“That’s probably the key reason Helena chose her to come. Everyone has skills and abilities which aren’t truly unique, but the quantity and variety in each individual is why they get referred to the warehouse. They earmarked you after that one event.”

Alice swipes a loose lock of hair behind her ear. The humidity only added to the sweat percolating across her brow.  
“You mean the Johnny Torch suspect I took down?”

Karla gives a grunt of approval, and Alice continues.  
“I still don’t see what was the big deal was. Don’t get me wrong, I like the career and work site change, but it was nothing.”

Karla releases one of her annoyingly childish giggles before replying.  
“Your instincts are why you’re here, silly. Everyone has your skills abilities back home, but you have them all bundled up into a fantastic feminine package. Back on Earth, it doesn’t matter and you were on our watch list for possible recruits, and we needed a woman here, so we called you and Morgan.”   
“Both of us?”  
“Well, yes. The longer you go without a limb, the harder it is for the body to remember how to use it when it’s replaced, or at least that’s what our research has shown. We pushed her application through in ten hours. Her resolve and tenacity is practically unheard of from someone in her situation. My recruiter was on post when it went down, and his instincts told him to check out her story. Wise choice, I would say. Even if we weren’t looking for combat trained agents, I would have recruited her. She had ‘it’ as they say. You can have all the training and knowledge, but you need that spark which sets you aside from the rest. Everyone has that spark here; you don’t get to this place if you don’t have it.” 

By the second mile, they were still a mile from swinging back towards the villas. Karla easily outpaced Alice as she chattered endlessly, despite Alice out-striding her by at least a foot or more. Slowing to respond to Karla’s constant stream of questions, Alice couldn’t comprehend how the small girl was unhindered by her endless jabbering. With years of training and conditioning, Alice never concentrated on her breathing or stride; yet thanks to one obnoxiously talkative child-woman, she was devoting more attention to just that. In her head, she knew the “child” was easily five or six times her senior, but she couldn’t wrap her head around the concept. Karla edges ahead as she continues to talk in bursts.  
“When I came on, the world was a different place. The war was underway, and I was learning anatomy the hard way, through helping the locals patch them back together on the table. Afterwards, I got my degree by going to med-school in Chicago, and they sent me back here. They didn’t have a medical school here yet, and I helped them set one up after a decade or so. Those were some interesting days I tell you. We didn’t have these villas, running tracks, skyscrapers, OW…” 

Alice watches in shock as Karla tumbles over her feet and collapses onto the ground. As she stops to help her, a painful sting erupts on her shoulder making her fall atop Karla unconscious. 

 

Alice wakes strapped to a metal examination chair with her arms and legs tightly secured. Laid before her were dozens of dissection instruments, saws, and knives making her breathing erratic while an unholy fear descend over her. As she uselessly struggles to pull some slack out of the straps, a seven-foot tall bipedal alien enters the room and grins horribly seeing her fully conscious. In a wicked tone, he seethes at her.  
“You’re awake already? Well, they’re not ready to begin your examination just yet. They are going to do your young friend first. Do you care to tell me who’s child she is?”

Alice clamps her mouth tightly shut defiantly resisting the drugs swimming through her blood stream demanding she answer his question completely and truthfully. She’s surprised she doesn’t speak a word, despite her body trying to scream out the answer. The alien waits ten seconds before sighing dramatically.  
“No matter, she’ll tell us in a few minutes anyways. Seeing that we’re going to exterminate you both afterwards, it really doesn’t make a difference who is tortured to death and who is peeled apart while still alive.” 

He leans over and gloating.  
“Care to guess how she’s going to die?”

Anger burns through Alice’s soul, as the memory of Anna’s vile suffering flashes across her mind’s eye and the alien continues to enjoy her bondage.  
“I can’t wait to review the tapes of your little friend’s session. What we did to your agent Bering was child’s play when compared what they have in store for this one. Oh! Child’s play! That’s a funny one! It seems they forgot the neutralizer implants. I’ll be right back…don’t go anywhere.”

Laughing over his shoulder he leaves the room. As the door whisks open, Alice hears Karla’s screams echoing down the hall. Unimaginable suffering weighs down her screams and cries making Alice’s eye’s burst in tears and she frantically pulls at the straps. Intentionally leaving the door open, the alien ensures she can hear the horrible suffering Karla endures, while Alien laughter bounces around. The alien returns several minutes later, as Alice’s eyes are blurred over from tears. The door remains open as he begins attaching the electrodes to the base of Alice’s neck and she feels her resistance slowly turned off one limb at a time. As Karla’s screams echo into the room, a new fire burns in her soul.   
Her tears, once making small rivers down her cheeks, suddenly vanish in a flash of heat over her face. As he makes a final attachment, the alien turn suddenly towards the door concerned. Ignoring Alice, he begins stepping away confused by the sounds coming from down the hall. Karla’s screams had abruptly stopped, and it was obviously disheartening for him. With his usual malicious tone, he cheerfully comments to Alice.  
“Oh…I hope she hasn’t died prematurely. We have four more hours of this planned before we terminate her. This is for science, you know.”

He briskly walks to the door and closes it. When he turns around to gloat over Alice, he flattens himself against the sealed door in horror. Sitting in her chair, Alice’s fiery anger explodes setting the electrodes and straps ablaze. Frozen in terror, the alien can’t rationally a plan to escape, let alone move. Alice steps easily out of her confinement and begins stomping towards the alien who turns and tries to fumble with the lock release. As he finally remembers how to work it, Alice grabs a hold of him around the neck and tosses him like a ragdoll across the room. His screams are primal as his neck smokes and he rolls in agony. With third degree burns from where she touched him, he crawls helplessly away as she collects him and lifts him off the ground by his chest. Screaming as her touch sears his skin, she tosses him once more across the room. Trying to get up from the floor, Alice can’t believe he is actually begging for mercy and compassion. Using both hands, she lifts him up by his chest and neck making his scream and sizzle. Carrying him to the chair, she throws him down and it automatically slaps restraints over him and his limbs. Despite the smoldering flames on his clothes and body, he somehow remains conscious as Alice takes an electric saw and turns it on.  
“This isn’t personal right? It’s for science.”

Driving the saw through his neck, his blood and fluids splash in every direction but Alice remains untarnished thanks to the flames covering her. After a minute, she realizes he’s dead and discards the saw into his lap. Reaching the door, she hammers uselessly until the last of her rage subsides. Sinking to the floor, all she can do is cry. Many minutes pass until a heavy lurch rocks the ship, shaking her out of her self-pity. As she rolls onto all fours, the door suddenly beeps and slides effortlessly open. Standing in her running attire and covered in all makes of fluids including her own blood, Karla wearily breathes a noticeable sigh of relief.  
“Thank God you’re still alive. I got here as fast as I could. Are you okay?”

Incredulously, Alice stares at the broken and battered child.  
“Am I okay? I thought they...they hurt you bad or something. I heard…”

Alice begins to reach out and hug Karla, but is surprised when she steps away from the embrace wearing a look of shame and distant pain. Bluntly, she dodges the comment.  
“We’ve got to go now. The engines are rigged to blow and the avionics bay is on fire.”

As Alice starts to ask questions, Karla grabs her hand and pulls insistently dragging her out the ship and down the path. Alice immediately notices Karla hobbling and unable to run. After several feet, Alice shakes her head and scoops up Karla in her arms. Running, she makes it over a hill before the ship suddenly explodes. After a controlled tumble and debris landing all around them, Alice picks up Karla again and resumes running frantically. Thanks to Candice’s tutelage of the local astronomy, she finds the “Bunny” nebula and uses it to navigate back to the villas. The locals never named the constellations like humans did, so she took it upon herself to make up her own.   
Alice ran for fifteen minutes, until she passed a Famori patrol. After directing them to the wreckage site, she realizes Karla is unconscious and insistently tells them she has to go. They seem to understand and make a call on their radio, but Karla resumes running to the villa using the lighted path. Minutes later, she is intercepted by Helena who scoops Karla into her arms and runs towards the medical shuttle waiting on the ramp. Despite Allice insisting she’s okay, she’s thrown into their warehouse shuttle and taken to the hospital.   
“I don’t see why you’re all worried about me! I’m not the one who was unconscious!”

Shaking her head, Candice is visibly shaken and grabs Alice’s head in her hands. Forcing her to look down into her lap, Alice’s face turns white seeing her arms, legs, and the lower half of her shirt covered in dark red blood from where she held Karla. Candice hesitates from grasping Alice as she’s overcome by the sight of so much blood. The shuttle leaves the pad and rockets after the first shuttle minutes ahead of them. Jumping beside Alice, she tears the bloody clothes off of her, has her lie back, and she does a cursory evaluation.   
Taking out some cleansing wipes, she breathes a sigh of relief finding no wounds or scratches on her lover, and takes out a sealed package of coveralls from an overhead bin. Ripping the package open, she has her throw the bloody clothes into a trash bag, and helps her redress. Candice can’t believe how her strong and resilient lover was suddenly a wounded and reclusive soul. Wrapping her arms around Alice after she dresses, she tries to comfort her as she shivers in the realization of what she just experienced. She’s shaken back to reality when a nurse gets her into a wheelchair and pushes her into a private room.  
Leaving Candice worrying outside Alice’s room, Myka finds the nurses station and travels up eight floors to the surgery units. It takes her five minutes of searching to find Ward 81-015. She can’t fathom why they utilized a strict number-based system, and then put the rooms in an expanding spiral from the center, even though the rooms weren’t physically arranged in that manner. Finding Helen sitting in a chair with her knees tucked tightly against her chest, Myka reads the pain in her eyes and fights from bursting into tears. As she stops in front of her, Helena leaps up from the chair and into Myka’s arms. Holding her, Helena finally finds the strength to speak.  
“She’s lost a lot of blood. She’s on her third pint, and they’re still sealing up her internal injuries. I’ll throw up if I have to repeat what they told me they found so far. We need to go on the offensive now. I’m sick of our people being singled out and tortured to death for their whims of supposed research. The Famori have assured me countless times that she’ll pull through unscathed, but I’m worried what would have happened had Alice not got her to us in time. Did she say how she got away?”

Shaking her head, Myka sighs heavily.  
“No, but she’s too shaken up to talk right now. Alice is staying with her, and promised she’d debrief her. Do you have any ideas about an offensive campaign?”

Helena nods subtly.  
“A few, but I need to get a round table meeting to gather everyone’s thoughts. Claudia and I have been talking about this since we escaped our ordeal, and I nearly lost my best friend tonight. As of this time, we’re taking the hurt to them.”


	29. Bureaucracy

Sitting at her desk outside Major General Arnold Bruckheimer’s lavish ninetieth floor level office, Sergeant Nadine Cromwell absently typed at her computer with her notepad just inches from her arm. With every object and article in its defined location, her life screamed order. From her lucky vintage Dodgers bobble-head toy to her signed Don Sutton rookie card, nothing on her desk was there by chance. Glancing expectantly at her watch, she sighs impatiently and resumes work. The front door leading to the general’s office swings open and the Major General rushes in. Glancing down at the greasy-haired unattractive soldier, he rolls his eyes as the bobble-head bounces steadily as he lets the door close.   
“I need a memo taken Nadine.”

Standing, she grabs her notepad and pen, following three steps behind the general. Stopping to fill his coffee cup, he sips at the freshly brewed joe and lets a warm smile creep over him. Freshly roasted and ground coffee was the true test of status on this world. The standard bean was grown a system over and was freeze-dried before arriving on Famori Prime.  
Sitting at the chair next to his, she sits and begins dictating his words. Arnold had his choice of five secretaries, all of them were ten times more young and attractive than Nadine, but her performance reports were off the charts. As much as he enjoyed the eye-candy of a young lady at his beckoned call, in order to stay on top of things he needed the best first. Pondering how he could get command to authorize him two secretaries was an ongoing quest, one which he had yet conquered. The layers of red-tape were insurmountable, and he did not want to lose the unwavering loyalty of his current secretary in the process. As he chatters endlessly about defense screen inadequacy and the source of recent enemy penetrations onto the planet, he sips at his third cup of coffee before lunch. Thickly built and a light brown receding hair line, he wasn’t a discerning woman’s first choice for an evening on the town. Ten minutes into the memo, he excuses himself and runs for the men’s latrine down the corridor. Nadine sets down her pen casually and sits erect in the chair.

As the door to the office slams closed, she quickly goes back to her desk and extracts an identical set of stars worn on his coat’s shoulders and replaces one. Going to his closet, she finds his backup jackets and shirts and replaces each article with one of the stars in her hand, while dumping the old star in her pants. Taking the general’s favorite coffee cup and dumping the contents down the sink, she places the cup on his desk. Removing a diamond ring from a purple anti-static bag, she places it beside the cup and it suddenly melts and reforms to resemble the cup. In a blink of an eye, the cup melts and evaporates leaving no evidence it existed. Setting the doppelganger in the dish rack, she dumps the fresh pot of coffee down the drain and washes it. In minutes, she sets the pot back into the brewer and starts a fresh batch.  
Gathering her belongings, she leaves the office and rushes down to the fifth floor restroom. Nadine waits at the mirror looking herself over making subtle uniform adjustments. After three minutes, the room’s last occupant departs and she heads directly to the farthest stall. The large handicap access stall was just a legal formality of Earth, but it served everyone’s interests when needing a changing room. Knocking on the door, Nadine hoarsely speaks.   
“Are you two done yet?”

The door swings open and Heaven sticks her face out wearing a cold stare of annoyance.  
“You said it wouldn’t be long! I’ve been standing around for four hours while sleeping beauty had the choice seating arrangement.”

Nadine rolls her eyes and motions for her to leave. Pushing past Nadine, Heaven rushes out and stands at the entrance waiting while Nadine enters. Sitting on the toilet, Sergeant Nadine Cromwell sits propped against the wall of the toilet unconscious. A hollow ring, resembling a large gold flat washer with writing, is attached to her forehead. Taking out a small coin from her pocket, she places it into the middle of the empty hollow of the coin on her forehead, and it suddenly releases as one coin. Catching it as it falls, Wendy breathes a sigh of relief having returned to her original shape and appearance. Leaving the Sergeant on the toilet, she closes the door and uses a screwdriver to re-lock the bathroom stall. As she leaves the bathroom, she hears Nadine groan and begin to stir, completely unaware of the switch.  
Exiting the building, they remain quiet until they take a second public shuttle and arrive at the central shuttle station. Entering an unmarked shuttle, no different than the hundreds flying overhead, they wait until the shuttle door closes and Myka calls out from the front.  
“So how did it go? Any problems?”

Heaven rubs her back and legs, willing the pain to subside.  
“I just need a few hours in the hot tub to make the pain go away.”  
From the cockpit, a second voice rings out enthusiastically.   
“How about I give you one of my famous rub downs beforehand?” 

Sergeant Morgan Powers cannot resist the opportunity to help the Japanese agent.  
“Satisfaction guaranteed!”  
Dodging her endless attempts to hook-up with her, Heaven realizes that her legs will need more than just warmth to recover. Shaking her head, she resigns.  
“Done! But just the legs, nothing more.”  
Myka shakes her head while flying back to the villas.   
“You know I could use a foot massage. How about you give me a foot massage?”  
Morgan leans over and seethes.  
“I’d love to but your girlfriend would do far more to me than kick my ass. This artifact crap scares me, so no thank you.”

 

Sitting down at the conference table, Myka squeezes Helena’s hand and smiles having missed her lover all morning. Following Agent Caitlin Todd, Karla enters clutching her sweater around the waist. Myka shares Helena’s pain seeing their once vibrant and whimsical leader weary and scarred from her ordeal. Though her wounds and internal damage was completely healed, the ghostly scars weighed down her every action. Though she fared better than Anna, Karla was angry and bitter and focused that energy towards taking the war to the enemy’s bed. Caitlin clears her throat before beginning, sensing the tension emanating from the small girl.  
“Okay…the bugs and tracking gear checks out. We have all eight of our suspects under surveillance, so we can start eliminating the list, and figuring out how the enemy is communicating with them.”  
Morgan plays with the purple-bagged coin inspecting it, yet wise enough not to touch it without the purple protection.  
“Exactly how does this work? Do you plant it on them?” 

Wendy shakes her head.  
“You have to have the victim grasp the Doppelganger Coin, not just touch it. About five seconds later, they are rendered unconscious so you have to be there to catch them so that they don’t hurt themselves when they fall. Now you can make it work with just them holding it in their hands, but, it works best when you place it on their foreheads. After that, you remove the center coin and take it with you while they are kept unconscious by the larger coin. You are transformed into the target, in every way, including bad breath and voice. When you return, you select which memories they retain from your travels, and place the coin back into the large one. It puts your memories into their head, and returns you to your original size, shape and appearance.”   
Myka laughs.   
“Listen to her! Hasn’t been here six months, and she’s already talking like she’s been doing this stuff for forever.”  
Wendy shakes her head grinning.  
“My last job as a Middleman Agent was extremely detail oriented. It’s just what I do.”

Caitlin finds it difficult to hide her surprise of the capabilities of the Warehouse. Realistic life masks were one thing, but total impersonation and memory manipulation was beyond her. In wartime, many civil liberties were essentially discarded, but the enemy they fought was beyond fair play. The once joyful and energetic doctor, was rendered angry and cold, consumed with thwarting the Yamorians, while another agent was having her tortuous memories repressed just so she could function. In just a few short years, her dream job turned into a horror movie; a sick torture porn feature which anyone anywhere could become the next starring victim. Every fiber in her body screamed at her find the moles immediately, fearing how many new victims the enemy would take.  
Claudia enters with Candice in tow and she sets down an analysis report.  
“Well from the wreckage, we got nothing, except they had our villa’s specific coordinates, and some of our profiles on file. If someone hadn’t of destroyed the ship, we might have gotten more.”  
Karla raises an eyebrow at her and coolly seethes at the warehouse caretaker.  
“They had way too much technical information on me, and that data had to be protected…from everyone. As I said in my report, I immediately realized they didn’t know exactly who I was, so I told them I was Francesca Davila’s daughter Heather. If they had done that to me knowing who I was is one thing, but they would have done that stuff to any child they found. That’s why I’m so pissed off. How’s that weapon coming along Claudia?”

Nervously Claudia fidgets in place.  
“Well the device is ready for actual testing in the field. My little robots will deliver their packages as ordered, but I still think this crazy drug is a bad decision. Prisoners on their ships wouldn’t be protected, and as far as I can tell, there will be no immediate cure.”  
Caitlin leans forward noticeably caught off guard.  
“What weapon?”

Claudia freely surrenders all her information in hopes someone will talk Karla out of it.  
“It’s an artifact powered drug which will be deployed into their water supplies. It will cause insanity and panic within six hours of consumption. The filtration systems can’t stop it, but neither can ours. This is something we developed, which I’m not proud to say, from our time on the forest river world.”  
Helena notices Karla roll her eyes and leans towards her.  
“And the command has approved this?

Karla grimaces sarcastically.  
“As if I’d tell them! Until our leak is sealed, they can’t know jack! Do you realize that this can only work if it’s a surprise? The amount scrutiny they could apply would practically make this impossible! No. No one but us can do this. The level of bureaucracy they have in command is mind numbing. Everyone gets their hands dirty and key military decisions are raked over 45 desks with everyone having to add their two cents before a committee debates the final order. No thank you.”  
Helena clears her throat grabbing everyone’s attention.  
“On the bright side, we have a new site to excavate. Command has recaptured Deminom III, one of the most war torn worlds in this and the previous war. It hasn’t seen a break in combat since day one of the resumption of hostilities. Command told us to get there as soon as we have a green light from internal security, and that just came an hour ago. We have fifty security, an engineering team, and I’m sending eight of you to lead the excavation. There will be six Famori from the warehouse there to get experience. The security team will have some heavy weaponry in-case trouble somehow shows up. I don’t want a repeat of our recon mission. Oh, and I’m sending you Karla to be the chief on-site physician.”

A tense moment passes between the old friends and Karla stands and leaves the room fuming. Helena feared this would happen, so she grudgingly continues.  
“The team assignments are as follows: Myka will take charge of Team 1, consisting of Anna, Candice, and Alice. Team 2 will be led by myself and consist of Morgan, Wendy and Heaven.”  
The three new members look at each other in tense glares, caught by Helena’s keen eyes.  
“Don't worry, you three. These are fairly simple practices. We have automated drones which scan the areas for artifacts, and we go in and extract them. All of this is OJT, so you’ll get the hang of it rather quickly. It used to be back breaking work, but the robots do the largest amount of the work now.”   
Myka leans over and interjects.  
“How long are they giving us?”

Looking through the paperwork, she sighs.  
“They want it wrapped up in 6 months, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen. This may take years; but after two months, they’re going to reevaluate our progress and status.”  
Claudia exclaims far louder than she planned.  
“Two freaking months! You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Helena shakes her head.  
“The last time we were forward deployed like this, we discovered some revolutionary aspects of artifacts in just a couple of weeks. Imagine what we could find in two months? Second, we’re sitting ducks here. Let’s get out there and draw them out to find us, not sit around waiting for them to come get us. We will take some extraordinary security precautions, and EVERYONE will be armed! We will also have some personal protections on us, but, no one should be unarmed anywhere, I don’t care if you’re showering. If there are no pertinent questions, let us get packed and go.”


	30. “It’s Raining Again”

Myka was absolutely abhorred by the scene which greeted them when they first arrived on Deminom III. The data described a world of lush forests, vast river valleys and river systems which put the Amazon to shame. As they made their final approach to the third largest continent, Myka bit her lip seeing vast swaths of brown and tan gouged into the green contours of the land mass. The slashes of devastation exceeded the size of most European countries, and Myka noted one area easily encompassed the state of California or Texas. On the ground, the areas were far more horrible, revealing vast battle sites devoid of all life. After the first weeks, the team was never broken apart but spread out to encompass the large battle sites. Surprisingly enough, they were finding only minor artifacts. Unlike previous battle sites, the artifacts were usually benign or lacked any harmful effects.   
When their two month mark came and went, no one was surprised that they were left in place. It was rumored that command caught wind of Karla’s weapon, but they never saw any evidence either way. Though the security details were the most underutilized and burdened with boredom, Helena refused to change the numbers or strength of the protection. Fearing a sneak attack, she felt it was better to be prepared and enforced everyone keeping a weapon nearby. In the two months of digging, their excavations resulted in six benign artifacts, and one which nearly caused Morgan and Wendy to start tearing each other’s eyes out. Miraculously, Heaven immediately recognized the sudden signs of an artifact, and scooped the alien trinket hidden in the dirt into a bag. Nullifying the effect almost instantly, the pair opted to keep away from each other until the lingering effects wore off two days later. It was on this day which Karla recognized Heaven had a special perception of the artifacts, and spent the evening testing her with the various recovered artifacts. Taking notes, she numbered each bag and locked them away in various containers away from each other.   
With the sites numbering in the thousands, Helena couldn’t fathom checking every square foot of area. As if Claudia was reading her mind from the Famori home world countless light-years away, a short time later a transport delivered a hundred automated drones installed with the artifact detection system. Flying only a few feet off the ground, they made quick work of sites and were able to isolate the major artifacts from the minor. Though each site only contained one or perhaps two artifacts, there were numbers of old sites which were completely devoid of artifacts. Helena and Myka took a trip to one such site and discovered the primary reason. The site, identically barren and devoid of life, was filled with numerous secondary holes, obviously not created during battle. After some scrutiny, they both agreed the artifacts were removed prior the enemy withdrawal. As they departed, they noticed in the craters closest to the scorched earth, the forest and jungle were slowly working their way into the blasted wastelands. More refreshing was the return of the heavy rains which seemed to have been avoiding the sites, and were filling the cratered landscape with countless pools and ponds.  
With the drones operating night and day, the teams seemed to work for them, rather than the other way around. No sooner were they wrapping up one battle field, they were off to another. The base camp, a loose assortment of tents and mobile buildings, was never at one site more than a few weeks. What surprised Myka was the lack of artifacts even in untouched areas. Despite Karla explaining what they did understand about artifact creation, which wasn’t a whole lot, the vast majority of the artifacts they found simply were of no danger to anyone or anything. As the weeks rolled into months, they found a well-deserved peace in collecting the minor and irrelevant articles of past combat and loss of life. Everyone was overly gracious that they weren’t digging up body parts with artifacts still attached, but it seemed the Famori agents weren’t so lucky, having uncovered a pair of bodies during the first weeks on planet. Remnants from the first war, they were proud to talk about them. Helena explained how thousands of humans rushed to their aid when it was apparent the enemy cared little for the human race’s attempts to remain neutral. Things would have fared far differently had they done so. So when the Famori discovered the remains of their female fighters and a human protectively covering her, the Famori spent the next week hugging every human they encountered.

It was over eight months into their exile when they cleared fifty percent of the sites. At their current rate, they would finish their operation far ahead early estimates. In four months they would wrap up at Deminom and would head back to the submerged river world of Gammoth. Anna displayed some depredation returning to the place she nearly died, but put up her best face when asked if she minded. She understood duty and service first far better than most, and became the example that most followed. Helena couldn’t believe she suppressed her anxiety so well, and agreed to lead the second team. Helena and Myka spent half the night talking to her until they were convinced it wouldn’t be an issue.  
As they worked at digging out a military complex the Allied forces, they now called themselves, pummeled into oblivion. While the bulk of the excavation teams toiled across the field, Helena led a select team into an ancient portion of the site recently unearthed. A drone ventured deep into the site and detected a powerful artifact deep inside, but couldn’t locate it in the hour it was allotted. Though the team lost contact with it after ten minutes, its onboard systems allowed it to operate independently for 55 hours. Returning with a detailed three dimensional map to follow, Helena felt it was worth a look. Additionally, it took pictures of mammoth stone tablets blocking the doors at one time. Broken into dozens of large pieces, it was fairly easy to figure out how they were put together. Even better, they got a name for the temple: Hamazora. Though communications were usually instantaneous, ever since they moved to this last site, communications were broken at best. Many attributed it to the heated warfare which battered the site, but no one saw it any different than the hundreds of sites they had visited thus far. Karla had spent the past week sending requests for information about the ancient site, but nothing ever came back through high command.  
Starting out just after breakfast, Karla led Myka, Helena, Anna, and Heaven deep into the pit-like entrance of the long forgotten temple. An hour after the team entered the temple, A sergeant yells at Candice to get over to the communications booth, “STAT.” Looking at the soldier incredulously, she growls as she pulls herself out of the pit she’s in and struts over the mobile communications center. Addressing him incredulously, she sighs dramatically.  
“What’s the rush? The systems haven’t worked since we got here, what great change could the statically snow bring us now? More snow?”  
Looking down at the display, she’s suddenly confronted with a clear image of Claudia in a panic. Realizing she’s never seen her distressed, she cringes as Claudia yells at her.  
“Don’t let them in! DO NOT enter Hamazora! The Famori translated the writing on the broken tablets you sent! It’s a warning to never enter the Pit of Horror and Despair.”  
Feeding off of Claudia’s panic Candice screams to reach the teams, but the sergeant shrugs, showing they aren’t answering. Candice turns back to Claudia.  
“We lost comm with the drone when it entered too.”  
Claudia collapses in her chair in despair.   
“They had another name for this place! The Temple of Elemental Fear.”  
As they stare at each other on the display, the ceiling begins to rattle and howl. As she begins to panic again, the sergeant says dryly.  
“It’s raining again.”


	31. “Truth and Strength”

Pushing on diligently, the team reaches where the drone turned back from after three hours of hiking. The drone cut through yards of branches and debris, but the path was still a great distance on foot. Approaching an open expanse, the team stops abruptly and gazes upon an illuminated entrance. Backlit with an organic green haze, the gate beckons them to continue forward while the weight of apprehension pulls at their feet. With a deep breath, Karla motions to follow her as she takes the lead. The shuffle and stomp of combat boots against the stone floor vibrate the walls as they pass speechlessly. The occasional intake of breath echoes down the corridor and adds to the tension filling the air. Karla, glancing down periodically to check the artifact detector, seems lost to her thoughts and robotically following the sensor’s directions. Reaching a fork in the path, Karla stops everyone by raising her hand in a fist above her head. Swishing the detector down each path she shrugs and points at Anna.  
“It’s indecisive. How about you and Heaven come with me, and Helena and Myka take the other path. I just want to get out of this damned place. I hate it here.”  
With silent nods and acknowledgements, the team morosely splits company and heads into the oblivion of shadows created by their lamps. After five minutes of walking, even the steps from the other halves are lost in the shuffle into the obsidian abyss. Helena pushes on with her detector held in front of her, as Myka uses her torch to make heads or tails of the walls and ceiling. With an organic style of construction, she felt the grooves and bulbous protrusions were more functional rather than decorative. Myka slows to examine a particularly unusual structure; her mind discerns a woman’s head protruding grotesquely caught mid-scream. As she extends her hand to touch the girl’s distorted face, Helena suddenly seizes Myka’s extended hand and looks at her incredulously. Myka glares at her lover then returns her gaze onto the wall, only to see the shape no longer present. Shaken, she scrutinizes the wall, and is unable to locate the shape once again. Clutching each other’s hand, they stride forward leaching the other’s internal strength.

Karla strides down the winding corridor ignoring the graphic horrors the torches produced. Even as Heaven and Anna walked shoulder to shoulder seeing the distended shapes and images along the walls and ceiling, Karla seemed to be oblivious to what everyone’s eyes were seeing. Following the directional indicator, she increases her stride as her two team members slow as they become more entranced by the sculptures to their left and right. As they move forward, the sculptures on the walls seem to repeat with minor differences like a three-dimensional zoetrope. Heaven’s eyes lock onto the right side of the wall as she tries to keep pace with Karla and becomes more absorbed with images flashing before her. Moving swiftly, she forgets that her legs are moving and sees the wall become a movie as she runs down the hall with Anna. Watching her previous life on Earth played out before her, she desperately sprints to escape the reenactment. Watching her parents murdered and growing up with a hole in her life, she feels the pit expand in her chest and her heart aches from the emptiness. Sobbing, she ignores and abandons her teammates driven to flee the scene. When the sculptures end she stops and collapses on the floor covering her face. The tears flow like rivers and she lies motionless defeated by her loss.  
Anna instinctively broke into a sprint with Heaven but lost sight of her as the wall consumed her entire attention. Running, she hears the rush of water following on her heels and she fearfully refuses to glance behind her. Looking around, she sees no signs of Heaven or Karla and panic engulfs her soul. As she sprints down the corridor, the roar surrounds her and her ears ring from the booming noise and pressure. Covering her ears, she screams against the cacophony rattling her body and spirit. Reenacting her experience from the jungles, she suddenly finds a hole in the floor, and disappears inside. Kicking and punching, she fights off the dozens of tendrils and limbs which grab and slash at her. After a minute, she pushes up and propels her body out of the water, landing in a soggy mass on the stone floor.   
Shivering uncontrollably, she pushes her arms against the stone floor and lifts her water-logged body to her feet. Yards ahead, she sees a door swing open and the pure white light from the overhead lights blinds her momentarily. Like a moth, she lumbers towards it, despite her instincts screaming to turn and run. Reaching the lighted medical exam room, tears explode from her eyes for reasons she couldn’t grasp. While her instincts beg her to run, her mind does not comprehend the reasons keeping her at the threshold. As her body begins to shake uncontrollably, she finally decides to leave only to find her legs shackled. Staring in disbelief, she looks over her legs and arms only to find each limb secured tightly to an exam table. A scream escapes her mouth and she suddenly finds her naked flesh against the icy cold metal table. Struggling uselessly, a humanoid Yamorian peers down on her vulnerable form smiling.  
“So, you don’t remember what happened to you the last time we met? It’s okay, let me help you remember.”  
Swinging the display with a list and order of the procedures, he takes a scalpel and begins the tedious process of removing her eyelids and enclosing the exposed eyes in protective goggles. Anna’s screams fill the halls and her pleas for help go unanswered.

Helena leads the pair down the endlessly hypnotic corridors. With the constant drip of water echoing around them, they push forwards and reach a thin corridor only wide enough for them to pass single-file. Without passing a word between them, Helena takes the lead and walks carefully through the winding path. After several minutes, the walls become translucent and glow. Giving off a bluish white glow, it only brightens as they walk further. Myka’s eyes glance down and she realizes the floor was as transparent and giving off light as the walls. As Myka lets Helena lead her along, she expends more of her attention on the floor. Her eyes discern a several subfloors beneath them, and she resists the vertigo of nearly walking on air as the floors become clear as glass. As she becomes entranced by the sensation, Helena suddenly falls to the level below her. Before she can react, a glass panel slides closed, sealing Helena off from the floor above. As Myka slams her fists against the trap door, Helena realizes she cannot reach the floor above even if Myka got it open. Pulling out her rifle, she steps back and releases several salvos only to see the blasts bounce uselessly off and bound down the hall before expending all their energy. Taking out her communicator, she keys it only to discover the batteries are depleted. Cursing, she motions to Helena to make her way in the same direction the path goes. Reading the stress on Helena’s face Myka tries to reassure her, and moves along the path checking her footing as she goes.  
After five minutes, their paths divert and Helena is led away to the right while Myka’s path takes her left. Helena finds her breathing labored, and she becomes annoyed with her hair falling out from behind her ear and finds the most basic and trivial matters make her overly agitated. As she walks, she cannot disguise her relief seeing the stone walls return and she nearly sprints through the doorway. As she stops just inside, the wall grinds grotesquely and she panics seeing the path to the glass maze sealed off from her. She tries to wedge her rifle in the path, only to have the butt splinter and explode as the door fully closes. Cursing at it, she looks around the room, she discerns another door opening and she sees little choice but to carry on.  
Walking forward she sees another doorway and gingerly checks it out before entering. A circular room no wider than nine feet in diameter, the room seems lined with ragged sheets metal. Focusing her flashlight on the walls, she enters and goes to the nearest wall. Running her fingers over the walls, she discerns small breaks between the pieces of metal and suddenly recognizes the reflective metal under her fingertips. Pulling away, she frantically swings her light around seeing the room plated in brilliant bronze. She turns to escape the room only to see both her doors sealed tightly with bronze. She spins in place looking for a means of escaping only to feel a sharp pain on her arm. Looking down, she resists the reflexive scream when she sees a three inch square attached firmly. As she struggles to pry it from her skin, one after another catapult onto her from the walls. Echoing in the room, she hears her name screamed. Flashing back to her daughter’s death, she cries as she’s entombed by the bronze sheets.

Myka wanders the glass maze until she reaches a room of similar glass. From behind her, a tentacle slashes at her weapon and tears it free from her grasp before she can react. Spinning around, she’s struck by a blow to her abdomen and it whips up across her head throwing her to the glass floor. Shaking off the strike, she spins around back onto her feet in time for another tentacle to grasp her ankle and flip her onto her back. As her head impacts the floor, the lights dim.  
Myka’s eyes flutter open as feels the cold air of the chamber lick her skin. Naked, she scrambles to her feet as the tentacle-wielding Yamorian approaches her. In a human voice it seethes at her dripping with malice.  
“This time I will not heal you afterwards Myka.”  
Seeing no avenue of escape, terror grips her. As she fights the crippling effects of fear, she snaps and stands defiantly in her vulnerable state. With anger swelling in her heart, she takes a step towards her rapist and seethes. For the first time in her life, she sees the creature hesitate as concern washes over it.  
“You will probably rape and kill me, but I will not yield to you! You can hurt my body, but you’ll NEVER see me cower in fear from you ever again! So do what you’re going to do, and get it over with, but I will never be afraid of your filthy kind again!”  
She recognizes the distinctive hesitation in its mannerisms; and as he lunges at her, she shifts out of his path and strikes with her palm against the side of its head. It rolls on the floor in agony and Myka throws her defenseless body atop his upper half and drives her fingers into its vulnerable throat area. She’s surprised how easily her fingers penetrate his flesh, and she feels a sense of relief that she has finally struck back at her rapist and abuser. Clutching his vital arteries and nerve paths, she extracts her fist dramatically, spraying his blue-green blood across her bare chest and legs. As it gasps for help, she keeps it pinned as the last of his life drains away. Lifeless, she finally relents and stands. Feeling no remorse or pleasure, she leaves his body in the middle of the room.   
In a blink of an eye, the wretched monster disappears leaving Myka standing naked and dripping in his remains. An explosion of pain erupts from her stomach as she feels disease running through her veins. Dropping to her knees, she clutches at her belly reliving the agony of the cancer running amok in her body. In a flash of realization she growls and fights to stand. As the strength is sucked out of her bones, she defiantly resists and screams out to the ceiling.  
“This is not real! I get it now! I’m not afraid anymore! You can cause my cancer to come back, but I will not submit to the fear! So if you’re going to kill me just get it over with!”  
As the pain surges it suddenly disappears and Myka finds all her gear at her feet and fully dressed. Sweat dribbles from her bow, the only evidence to the pain she endured. To her relief, the blood and guts of her would-be rapist were also gone. Picking up her gear, she sprints out the door in search of her teammates. 

Reaching another illuminated glass room, Myka finds Helena coated in a layer of bronze. Hearing her gasping for breath underneath the sheets of bronze, Myka screams her name and begins prying the sheets from her face. Realizing the futility of her actions, Myka grabs Helena’s bronze hand and lays her head against the cold metal. Speaking to her metal lover, she restrains the tears just under her calm surface.  
“Sweetie, this isn’t real. You’re the source of your own pain here. I know it seems like you’re cut off from everyone you love, but I’m here for you always. Even if we die apart, we’ll be together again. Please I love you. Fight it!”  
Minutes tick by with no movement until finally a sliver of bronze suddenly cracks and falls away from Helena’s mouth. One by one, the metal strips lose their footing and fall to the floor making a vicious ring echo though the room. Myka restrains the sobs of emotion as Helena’s metal cocoon falls away. As the last of the strips rattles against the floor, Myka wraps Helena in a bold hug, sharing her closeness and warmth. After Helena passionately wraps her lips over Myka’s, she breaks the embrace and laughs.  
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come by darling. I heard my daughter calling for me, but then I realized it was you, it got me thinking. Everything started making sense when you were talking to me, and I found the strength to fight back.”  
Leading her partner out, they find a set of stairs out of the labyrinth and double back in the other side of the corridors. Entering a corridor similar to the first ones they were walking through, they find Heaven lying motionless on the floor. Rolling her onto her back Helena gasps sharply seeing a massive hole burned through the Asian girl’s chest. Myka grimly checks for a pulse, but pulls away after fifteen seconds. Shaking her head, she takes out a blanket from Heaven’s pack and covers her. Pressing on, they continue further, unable to speak, but clutching the other’s hand.   
Pushing forward, the distant screams from Anna make the pair bolt down the corridor until they reach a glass-encased room. Striking the glass uselessly, Myka screams Anna’s name as she sees the grotesque medical torture scene unfold. Anna, unable to process her dissection can only scream in agony as the bipedal alien meticulously removes her sensitive flesh. Refusing to lose one more of her team, Myka concentrates ad suddenly finds herself inside the room with Anna. Reaching her side, she is unable to stop the alien’s programmed tasks, and leans next to the Russian agent. Squatting next to Anan’s ear, Myka speaks forcibly over Anna’s horrific screams.  
“Agent Krylenko! Anna! Please! This is a hell you’ve created on your own! I can’t stop it, only you can.”  
Myka pauses trying to think over Anna’s horrible cries. Taking a deep breath, Myka continues.  
“Anna…I’m sorry that we made you forget this; but like it or not it did happen. It’s up to you now to deal with it in your own way. It will either kill you or you’ll find some place for it in your life. I don’t know. All I do know is that afterwards, if you choose to live, your friends and loved ones will be here for you. That I can guarantee.”  
Reaching over to the broach around Anna’s neck, she takes out the almond-sized object and places it into Anna’s mouth. Forcing her mouth closed, the object is instantly absorbed and her memories are returned. Unable to watch the vile torture, Myka reluctantly turns her back on the scene and leads Helena out so Anna can either live or die with her memories restored. The pair walk a dozen more yards and discover another glass room no different than Anna’s. Sitting in the center, the child-sized Karla sits in a large pool of blood. Dressed in a hospital gown with the back fully open, Karla sits staring morosely into the red pool. Similar to the state she was rescued by Morgan, Myka flashes back to her horrible abuse she endures in a child’s body. Standing over her with a smug grin, a bipedal Yamorian waits over Karla. Myka quickly reaches her leader’s side and notices a military pistol sitting in her lap cocked. Recognizing the child’s pitiful expression, Myka motions for Helena to talk to her as she addresses the alien.  
“It’s over now! Let her be!”  
Standing, the alien shakes his head as he heads towards the door.  
“I’ll leave but it is not I who has her in chains. Those shackles she made herself with deception and lies, and only she has the key. Good luck, my master.”  
Confused, Myka watches as the creature exits the room and disappears. Turning to Karla she joins Helena and are unable to grasp the gun in Karla’s lap. Crying, Helena pleads for her old friend to give her the gun, but Karla ignores her words. Myka stops Helena and leans towards the child.  
“What did he mean by lies? Karla what does all this blood mean on your legs and body. Is there something you’re not telling us?”  
Helena notices a tube underneath Karla and pulls until a blood storage bag and long metal probe slides out from Karla’s gown. Confused, Helena shows Myka who struggles to make sense of all the clues. As Helena begs for Karla to explain, Myka sees Karla’s name written on the bag, and gasps. Karla slowly begins to raise the gun towards her head with tears pouring out from her closed eyes. Helena desperately tries to stop the slow advance of the pistol. Myka screams at Karla.  
“Why did he say lies and deception? You’d better tell me or I’ll leave you here to rot in this hell!”  
Her words make Karla shake and hesitate. Finally, she hoarsely begins to speak.  
“When they captured me, they didn’t know who I was, but suspected who I was. They had restraint, and I was pissed. The only way I could get their queen ruffled was to show that she was losing control of her leaders. So I saw a break when the drugs they used wore off faster on me than Morgan. I was able to kill them and cut myself free, and that’s when I saw a pint of my blood on the table. If they weren’t going to act like the monsters they were, I would make everyone think they were. I filled myself up with my own blood and made it look like I was hemorrhaging from a brutal rape. It worked too well. My friends in the hospital were more than willing to help me, and filed the reports accordingly which would find their way to her eyes.”  
Helena is surprised by Myka pushing away from the girl in anger.  
“You did what! I was so pissed! I cried! I ought to use that gun on you myself! What kind of person fakes something like that?”  
As the tears run down her cheeks, Karla stares at the pistol, longing to continue.  
“I had to do what was required to hurt her! You! Anna! Helena! All of you were hurt by these monsters, and it was up to me to protect my girls…at any cost.”  
Shaking her head, Myka lashes out and slaps Karla, sending her backwards. The gun splashes into the pool of blood and Karla covers her face, sobbing in shame. Leaving Helena to pick up Karla, Myka storms out and paces off her anger.   
As she breathes, a door opens ahead and a Yamorian beckons her to follow. Too angry to resist, she strides towards him. Letting him lead the way, she follows and lets the door close behind her. As the door slams, a dull red light fills the room. As her eyes adjust, she’s led past dozens of armed guards, each bowing respectfully to her. She lets the alien lead her to a massive chamber filled with electronic displays and status boards. Peering down at a display, she makes out the planet Earth surrounded by hundreds of Yamorian carriers and battlecruisers. Myka represses her emotions seeing the Earth in the crosshairs of a massive attack. Led away, she is brought to another chamber and past another dozen guards who bow respectively to her.  
Ushered into a private chamber, Myka sees a massive creature the size of a city bus carried aloft by dozens of smaller workers. Reminiscent of a termite queen, the Yamorian leader was hardly able to move on her own without assistance. Setting her down in front of Myka, the workers depart and an image suddenly appears before her. Projected by an unknown means, the humanoid woman walks to Myka and bows before speaking.  
“Over five thousand years ago, my people found that temple. As one of fifteen potential queens, we are all tested as you were. Only the bravest and wisest were capable to survive the temple of fear, and rightfully lead our people. Today you stand before me as my successor. By the laws of my people, they now only recognize you as the one. Right now, all my larva children are being slaughtered to make room for your line to take their place. All I ask is to show mercy on my warriors, they were simply obeying my orders.”  
In the deep recesses of her mind, Myka oddly makes sense of her situation. As she stands, a warrior approaches to kill the old queen but Myka stops him with a wave of her wrist.  
“I think I have something better than death for you.”  
   
Epilogue

Helena opted to stay behind to observe the Temple of Hamazora. After six weeks, she refused to accept Myka’s loss. After a month of daily searches, the entire temple complex was mapped, and they never found any trace of Myka. Even as word of the Yamorian cease fire and eventual surrender reached her, she refused to give up hope. As she reviews the weekly reports from the artifact recovery teams spread out through the systems, she is interrupted by Anna carrying an insulated thermos. Smiling meekly, she sets out a cup for Helena and pours the freshly brewed tea.  
“The storm will be here in an hour. The camp commander says you’re to pack up and get your rear back there ASAP. He says it’s a bad one again and doesn’t want to search for your body afterwards.”   
Shaking her head at the commander’s over dramatics, she sighs in resignation and lets Anna begin packing up her gear. Confined in two small portable crates, Anna has it all secured by the time the two corporals arrive. As Helena stares at the entrance of the temple, a dramatic series of lightning strikes bombard the temple making her long for Myka’s whereabouts. Abandoning the tent, she lets Anna lead her to the transport as the soldiers tear it down.   
As she sits in the flimsy cloth chairs, she gazes down at a picture of the couple together during a dig on the far side of the planet. Covered in dust and dirt, they both looked disheveled, yet they both wore the proudest smiles a couple could share. It carried Helena through the darkest moments, and today was turning into another one of those days.   
As she locks her eyes on the picture, a pair of dusty and muddy boots stops in front of her. With a heavy heart, she lets her eyes wander upward to see the woman from her picture standing before her. She practically squeals seeing Myka and throws her arms around her neck, kissing her passionately. Overcome with emotion, she asks to shower and change first, and lets Helena sit in the shower room explaining her absence.  
After getting Helena to comprehend that she’s the new queen of the Yamorians, she goes onto explain how she told them to return to their simple lives as farmers of their world and abandon war. Though it was a hard sell, they accepted it in stride and seem much happier overall. Though it was far more complicated than she made it, she felt it was the best she could do without showing them. With Karla stepping down as the team leader, Helena explained how she took up the role, and they have a replacement agent arriving in a week. Though not as qualified as Heaven, she willing to take whomever they sent.   
As she lies with Helena in bed, she tries to sleep, but her mind drifts to the Yamorian home world and the endless tasks the queen must accomplish on an hourly basis. Standing beside the old queen, she directs the new purpose the Yamorian race and gently nudges her decisions. Using the knowledge gleamed from two major world wars and countless engagements in human history, Myka feels the weight of her responsibilities at every moment of her life, both awake and asleep. With a level wisdom and understanding she never desired or requested she lives a dual life in absolute secrecy from the Allied worlds. Even as command struggles to comprehend the events which made the Yamorian surrender on the eve of great victory, Myka laughs as they try to theorize how they must have been in a greater military position than they believed.   
Eventually she came clean with the Famori high council and Helena, but it was nearly two years after the surrender. Privately, the Famori made arrangements to transfer out the pair to a more diplomatic role. Lying that they were to fill a request for a planet-side diplomat with the Yamorians, the High command could do little but agree with their alien natives and go along with them.   
Arriving on the war scorched world, Myka leads the delegation and settles into her life on the new world. With Helena taking charge of their vast artifact collections, she knows she’ll spend the next dozen years just inventorying and categorizing the small warehouses of items. With the most dangerous items shipped off to be stored in the new Warehouse One, Helena was amazed with the behaviors of the Yamorians.   
Myka knew it was no accident that their hosts were welcoming, friendly, and extremely gracious for their presence. Gone were the millions of warriors, silently and respectfully put to eternal rest having successfully served their purpose. In their place were hundreds of artisans, engineers, doctors and construction workers. It was the way of their people, and human values of life were not as applicable. Myka was changing that view, but knew she would gently nudge them towards it, not shove. Real change was gradual and consistent, and Myka knew she had time. What she hadn’t told Helena was how her aging process would be slowed. As the Famori were able to extend their life by a few hundred years, the true Queen lived for thousands of years. Myka had no idea what would happen when the two were combined in her case, but her future was hardly written in stone. All she knew for certain was that here and now, she lived with her eternal partner and they loved each other without reserve or doubt. What more could a simple girl ask from this crazy life.

**Author's Note:**

> Please take a quick NEW poll on which characters you will want to pair up.  
> http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=54836722e4b08e1f99e921d8


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